“He asked you to come with him?”
“Yes.”
More silence.
“He will make you his woman, yes?” This time it was an older brother speaking, worried, suspicious. “He promised?”
“Yes, Brother. He wants me to be his woman, and I want to be his woman, too. You needn’t worry.” His silly questions made her grief disperse. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Didn’t you always?” His shrug was something she couldn’t miss, even in the last of the darkness. “I never expected something like this to happen. I knew you might do something wonderfully different, maybe turn into some kind of a warrior-woman. You know, like in some of the wintertime tales. But this …” He shook his head, then sighed. “How will I know that you are well, not harmed, not hurt? How will I know what will become of you?”
As he tried to pull his hand away, she pressed it tighter, winning the contest easily, as always.
“You will, Brother. You will. Your spirit will find the way. It always did.”
Pushing her fears away, she tried to be brave, for his sake. The doubts, oh, but she would not let them harm her. They had sneaked upon her only once during the night, when she had to leave his side in order to wash and to relieve herself. The warriors’ looks made her uneasy, the strangeness of their gazes. They clearly did not see her worth, did not understand his insistence on taking her along, a clumsy, dirty, foreign thing, not pretty, not womanly and seductive, not anything that made it worth the trouble of taking a woman back home. Just a little savage out of the east. The realization made her shudder in fear. What if he tired of her after some time? What if he didn’t want her anymore?
She pushed the troublesome thoughts away, squeezing her brother’s hand instead, for after getting back to the wolf youth’s side, the doubts had vanished. For the remnants of the night, watching his sleeping face, holding his hand and caressing, making sure he was not turning hot or beginning to feel worse otherwise, she had felt the confidence flooding back, a happy, trustful reassurance. She was right in her choice. To give up on him, and because of silly fears, was not an option. Whatever was going to happen would happen, but he would make sure she did not regret it. He promised.
“Just make sure not to forget me,” she said, smiling at her brother through the fading darkness. “Glooskap and the Sky Spirits will guide me and keep me safe, just like they’ll be watching over you now that you stepped on your true path. They will not keep us apart and in the darkness, not for our entire lives. They will make sure we’ll know about each other, somehow.” She tried to smile reassuringly. “You know their ways, better than me. You know they will not let us lose each other.”
He was squeezing her hand in his turn, clutching it desperately, his face pale in the grayish mist, jaw tight, lips nothing but an invisible line.
“I will never forget you, Sister. I will pray and offer every day of my life. The fragrant tobacco smoke and many other valuable gifts. I will make sure the Great Spirits will not forgo you, or leave you behind. Just as I never will.”
And that was that. There was nothing more to say, or to wish for, but she knew she would be safe now, and looked after. Her brother would make sure no harm would come to her. He was always the man she relied upon the most, always.
Side by side and in a lighter mood, they watched the sky turning brighter, with Father Sun rising as he always did, winning his night battle, to spread his light and warmth, and his wonderful benevolence.
The new day was born, and she peered at the pinkish glow spreading behind the treetops of the opposite bank, her excitement welling, threatening to spill. She was stepping on a new path, and the Sky Deities were blessing her, happy, smiling upon her. Oh, but this path would take her to wonderful places. Now she knew it for certain.
Afterword
While having a fairly large amount of evidence as to the time of the Great Iroquois League formation, we cannot tell for sure when the Mu-hee-can (Mohican) People came to occupy the valley of the Hudson River. It might have happened not many decades after the Great Peace of the Iroquois was established, or maybe a century or so later.
According to some of the legends, the Mu-hee-can People’s ancestors came to the Hudson River valley after much wandering, seeking the lost homeland of “great waters,” finding it in this mighty river that “flowed and ebbed like no other.” They came to call it Muheconneok, which roughly means ‘The Waters That Are Never Still’. Here they settled, to became known to their neighbors as River People, or Mu-hee-can, Mohican as we know these people today.
But the Great League of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee, People of the Longhouse) had spread to the west, a strong alliance of five nations, an amazing democracy and a regional power that no one could overlook or dismiss lightly. Wary of strangers, this powerful league did not hesitate when it came to waging war, in defending their towns and villages, or, like in many cases, taking the warfare into the enemy territory.
Out of the Five Nations, the members of the Great League, the People of the Flint (Mohawks) were the ones responsible for the eastern neighbors of the confederacy and their behavior. Carrying the title of Keepers of the Eastern Door in the metaphorical Longhouse of the Great League, these people took their responsibilities seriously. The wars between the Mohawk and the Mohican People were reported to last for centuries, relentless and uncompromising.
In this novel, I explore the possible beginning of this turbulent history, when around the thirteenth century, these people began to come into more and more contact. The Great League was certainly already flourishing back then, but the presence of the Mohican People might have been pure assumption. Maybe they had been around by that time already, or maybe they had arrived a century or two later. What we do know for certain is that by the seventeenth century, the conflict between these two nations was an established fact, carrying much history in it, going back centuries as reported.
At some point, the Mohicans were reported to form an association of four or five nations as well, not a confederacy but an alliance, for defensive purposes probably, and to maintain trading ties. Unlike the Great League, there was no mutual government and no sense of political body with strict sets of laws proscribing everyone’s conduct. And yet, these people continued to be a force to be reckoned with, even though, at the time setting featured in this novel, the idea of such cooperation might have only been beginning to form, promoted by some farsighted leaders, probably, not yet to bear fruit.
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What happened next is presented in the second book of the ‘People of the Longhouse’ Series, “The Foreigner”.
“Beyond the Great River” is the first book in “People of the Longhouse” Series:
Beyond the Great River
The Foreigner
Troubled Waters
The Warpath
Echoes of the Past
More on the earlier history of the region, and on certain characters appearing in this book, can be read in “The Peacemaker” Series:
Two Rivers
Across the Great Sparkling Water
The Great Law of Peace
The Peacekeeper
More books by this author include “The Rise of the Aztecs” and “Pre-Aztec” series and more.
Zoe Saadia, Beyond the Great River (People of the Longhouse Book 1)
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