Algonquian Words
Cattapeak: spring
Cohattayough: summer
Kwiocosuk: shaman, priest
Mamanatowick: ruler of several villages
Nepinough: earring of the corn season
Popanow: winter
Taquitock: the harvest and the falling of the leaves season
Weroance: chief of a village
Weroansqua: female chief of a village or dominant wife of the
village’s weroance
Characters Mentioned
* historically identified person
Abooksigun (wildcat) – 22, Dasemunkepeuc warrior
* Andacon (Evergreens) – 25, Wingina’s war chief
Alsoomse (Independent) –17, protagonist
Askook (Snake) – 21, Hurit’s brother and enemy of Alsoomse and
Wanchese
* Eracano – 30, Numaes’s husband and Wingina and Granganimeo’s
brother-in-law
* Granganimeo (He Who Is Serious) – 33, Roanoke weroance and Wingina’s brother
Kimi (Secret) – Alsoomse and Wanchese’s dead sister, 4 at time of
death, 1575
Kitchi (Brave) – Alsoomse and Wanchese’s dead brother, 11 at time
of death, 1580
Matunaagd (He Who Fights) – Alsoomse and Wanchese’s father, 35
at time of death, 1579
Matwau (Enemy) – Hurit, Askook, and Huritt’s father, 38 at time of
death, 1579
Nadie (Wise) – Alsoomse and Wanchese’s mother, 36 at time of
death, 1582
Nootau (Fire) – 20, Sooleawa’s son and Alsoomse and Wanchese’s cousin
* Osacan- 26, elite member of Wingina’s council
* Piemacum (He Who Churns up the Water) -- 25, hostile Pomeiooc weroance
Powaw (Priest) – 31, Wingina’s kwiocosuk
Rowtag (Fire) – Sooleawa’s husband, 36 at time of death, 1579
Samoset (He Walks Too Much) – 19, womanizer, friend of Askook
Sokanon (Rain) – 18, Sooleawa’s daughter and Alsoomse and
Wanchese’s cousin
Sooleawa (Silver) – 39, Nadie’s sister and Alsoomse and Wanchese’s
aunt
*Tanaquincy – 28, Granganimeo’s chief advisor
* Taraquine – 19, warrior and friend of Wanchese
* Tetepano – 27, elite member of Wingina’s council
*Wanchese (Take Flight off of Water) – 20, protagonist
Wematin (Brother) – dead mamanatowick, brother of Ensenore, 50 at
time of death, 1579
* Wingina – 34, current mamanatowick and Granganimeo’s brother
Map
Excerpt
2
The mist of midday had disappeared. A solitary canoe cut through the somewhat choppy water. Edges of reflected grayish-white cumulous clouds rippled. West of the clouds, high above the mainland, the sky was bright and clear.
Two of the four men in the canoe labored. At the rear of the canoe, gazing at the west bank of the narrow land mass that stretched behind and to the south of Roanoke Island, arms folded below his rib cage, Wingina, mamanatowick of Dasemunkepeuc, Roanoke, Croatoan, Pomeiooc, Aquascogooc, and Secotan, presided. The bottom edge of the large copper square, suspended from his neck, touched and retouched the back of his right hand. Two one inch copper squares, attached to his earlobes, swung.
Seated in front of Wingina was his brother-in-law and trusted friend and advisor, Eracano, four popanows his junior,. Like Wingina, he wore a pearl bracelet about each wrist. Rather than a copper-plate necklace, he wore a string of polished shells that extended to his sternum. Shells hung from his earlobes. Like his superior, both sides of his head were shaved, the hair in between roached, drawn tightly back, knotted at the base of his skull.
Neither man this day had chosen to implant in the crevice cut in the top of his forehead the stem of a large turkey feather. Not so the younger men that plied the paddles. Wanchese in front and Askook behind wore the white-tipped feather. A smaller feather protruded from a skull incision above each of their ears. The right side of each man’s head was shaved more closely than the left. Each wore around his left wrist an archer’s wrist band of deerskin.
Parts of Wanchese’s body were painted black. A painted v denoted the space on his forehead above the bridge of his nose. A painted band of black circled each bicep. Two v’s, one inside the other, were painted necklaces. Two more bands circled the widest part of each calf muscle.
Above Wanchese’s deerskin apron two pairs of circles – the larger straddling his navel, the smaller straddling his sternum – marked his stomach and lower chest. The circles represented the four deaths in Wanchese’s family.
Askook’s chest was unpainted.
Wanchese saw above the island’s irregular tree line the familiar rising, angling, drifting smoke. He had been gone nearly two moons, confident that cousin Nootau provided the necessary fish and meat and that cousin Sokanon, her mother Sooleawa, and his sister Alsoomse accomplished all else that was essential for the two families’ subsistence.
Living at Dasemunkepeuc, he had at Wingina’s behest traveled with older emissaries to distant villages outside the mamanatowick’s confederation to deliver and receive personal messages. He had traveled also to Secotan -- his mother’s childhood village – and Aquascogooc and once to neighboring Pomeiooc, whose weroance was now challenging Wingina’s authority. Other braves his age native of Dasemunkepeuc were entirely capable of doing this work. “Wingina is training you,” Tetepano had told him during Tetepano’s, Cossine’s, and his recent trip to Mequopen. Whether or not it was because Wingina’s uncle, Wematin, had relied on Wanchese’s father to lead his braves in battle, Wingina had chosen to elevate his status.
It was his mother, Nadie, however, that this day occupied Wanchese’s thoughts. Today’s impending burial had kindled his remembrances, roiled his emotions.
Many cohattayoughs ago his father, Matunaagd, a young brave, had traveled to Secotan with his mamanatowick, Wematin, and seven high-born, lusty braves to attend the village’s first-harvest corn festival. Secotan and Aquascogooc had recently accepted Wematin as their chief protector. Secotan lay across the great river from its fierce enemy, the Pomouik. Matunaagd had seen a lithe, graceful beauty dance about a ceremonial post. He had spoken to her during the subsequent feast. Her eyes had welcomed him. He had married her during the second moon of his four moon stay.
Wematin had sent his nephews Wingina and Granganimeo to Secotan to retrieve him. Nadie had given birth to Wanchese nineteen cohattayoughs ago, then Alsoomse, then Kitchi, and then Kimi. The youngest, Kimi, had died of a fever eight cohattayoughs ago at the age of four. Matunaagd, and Wematin, and Nadie’s brother-in-law Rowtag had been slain by the Pomouik four cohattayoughs ago at Panauuaioc eight days after Secotan’s concluding, annual, falling of the leaves’ corn festival. Nadie, Wanchese, Alsoomse, and Kitchi and Aunt Sooleawa, Nootau, and Sokanon had moved then to Roanoke. One cohattayough later Kitchi had drowned in the Great Waters. Decimated by grief, worn to emaciation, nearly two popanows ago Nadie had succumbed.
He had not valued her sacrifices. How he had raged after his father’s murder! How he had fantasized savage reprisal! He, nearly fifteen, not yet a man! How his mother had comforted him, needing herself to be consoled. He wondered now if all her efforts to assuage him had helped her. He wanted to believe they had!
It was after Kitchi’s death that she had desperately needed him. He had continued to mope. He had bristled. He had raged. Alsoomse had loathed him. His aunt had lectured him. His Dasemunkepeuc friend Osacan had crossed the waters to reason with him. Granganimeo himself had addressed him, had then sent him to his brother, Wingina, who had succeeded Wematin as mamanatowick. Wingina had put him to work. Gradually, Wanchese had emerged from his funk, but not soon enough, he believed, to demonstrate to Nadie that he was a deserving son.
A screeching gull soared over the canoe, its shadow crossing Askook’s body.
“Be careful, there. Better that he foul you than me,” Eracano remarked.
Wingina laughed.
Askook craned his neck.
“He is gone.” Wingina raised his right forearm. “Kiwasa has chosen not to do you mischief.” He grinned. “We travel under his protection.”
Their canoe rode the path of light of the waning sun. Directly ahead, points of the wind-driven water flashed.
Kiwasa! Wanchese scoffed. Wematin had taken Kiwasa’s statue with him to Panauuaioc, after his brother Ensenore and the kwiocosuk, Powaw, had bestowed ceremonial offerings to Kiwasa and had sprinkled sacred tobacco on the great river’s waters. Powaw had convinced Wematin that the Pomouik’s invitation to consummate peace was sincere! Wematin had had his doubts. Wematin had left behind at Secotan his grown nephews, Wingina and Granganimeo, and his nephew-in-law, Eracano. But he had taken Matunaagd and Rowtag and Askook’s father Matwau, they, similarly skeptical, having left behind their wives and children.
Hours later, the wives and children of all who had attended the great feast had paddled back to Secotan. Their husbands and fathers were dead. While they had been praying to their idol, Pomouik braves, previously hidden in the woods, had fallen upon them. The wicked god Kiwasa had chosen to favor Wematin’s enemy.
Close to five cohattayoughs had passed. Wingina had not retaliated.
Attacking enemies with large numbers was not the Real People’s way. Victory was achieved by subterfuge, by ambush. Because of the foolishness of Wematin’s priests the Pomouik victory had been large! Because Wingina’s enemy expected retaliation, such a victory could not be replicated. Nevertheless, reprisal was essential. Wanchese believed that Wingina should send ten braves (Wanchese included) across the river above Panauuaioc during a moonless night to wait in cattails for the sun’s first light. Pomouik hunters seeking deer taking water would appear. But Wingina had attempted nothing. Dasemunkepeuc and Roanoke braves, and Wanchese, were questioning his leadership.
So apparently had been the weroances of Aquascogooc and Secotan. Piemacum, the weroance of Pomeiooc, was seeking to wrest from Wingina much of his confederation. Villagers granted weroances their authority for protection. Wingina had received messages from allies in Secotan that Piemacum had come to their village vowing to safeguard its people. During the past two moons, Pomeiooc braves had encroached on Dasemunkepeuc hunting grounds. On one occasion Tetepano, Abooksigun, and Andacon had been driven away by a volley of arrows.
Wingina needed to assert his will. He needed to eliminate Piemacum: if not by execution, then by banishment. Dasemunkepeuc and Pomeiooc had too much in common to be enemies. Would he finally take bold action?! Or would he continue to heed voices of caution?
“Wanchese.” Askook had tapped Wanchese’s right shoulder. They were nearing the island’s north shoreline.
“Wanchese. Would it be wrong for me to seduce your sister?”
“What?!” Wanchese straightened, scowled. “You?!”
“Why not me? I have that gift!”
“Some of us question that.” Was Askook teasing him? Playing a joke? Better that he assume so, pretend to be good-humored, pretend not to be offended. “Who do you think you are, Samoset?”
Askook whispered in Wanchese’s ear. “Young women with large breasts want me.”
“That I would not know.” Wanchese allowed the flat part of his paddle to skim the water.
“I want to give Alsoomse the pleasure of talking to me before …” He smiled. “Given the reason we are arriving, I am not sure what I should say first.”
“To arouse her?” The sides of Wanchese’s face were hot. This was more than teasing. Askook was intentionally provoking him!
After a pause, Askook answered. “Yes.”
“You will think of something.” Wanchese dug his paddle into the water. Unlike Osacan, or Taraquine, Askook lacked honorable qualities. In the past Askook had seemed more intent on wanting to be his friend than being his friend! At best, he had been a nuisance. Now …?
He had his own qualms about speaking to Alsoomse. How much thought had he given about how she had suffered? How often had he sat beside her the past thirteen moons, he more often across the sound fixated in his sphere of pain. She needed a brother better than he. She needed a man to cherish her. A good man. A good husband.
Askook! Hah!
None of his friends had showed any interest in her. It was not that she was less desirable looking than most of the maturing girls he knew at Roanoke or Dasemunkepeuc. She was what, seventeen? It was because she was opinionated. Too much a questioner. Too much the meddler. Why could she not accept who she was, a female meant to do female work to benefit every person of the village?
They were close to the landing place. An arrow’s flight away three men waited at the shoreline. Wanchese recognized Granganimeo and his chief advisor, Tanaquincy. Granganimeo and Wingina would be presiding over the village burial. Wanchese guessed that maybe six people had died since the previous community reburial, when his mother, Alsoomse, and he had laid young Kitchi’s remains to rest. Wingina had performed his duty then. He would be performing it now, showing his people here and elsewhere that he cared, that every person in every village was respected, regardless of status.
After conversing with Granganimeo and Tanaquincy for close to two minutes, Wanchese was able to break away. He strode up the sandy bank toward the pathway that led to the village. Shadows of pine branches moved across his bare shoulders. Drifting smoke quickened his approach. Outside the palisade that contained the nine village longhouses, oblivious of the sounds of Askook’s footfalls behind him, he saw the top of his aunt’s house. Their hands and arms working, three women – Alsoomse, his aunt, and his cousin Sokanon -- were bent over several reed mats.
Alsoomse glanced his way. She saw him. She rose, took two tentative steps, rushed to him. They embraced.
“You came,” she murmured, the right side of her face pressed against his chest.
He stroked her hair. “I am here to stay,” he said. For awhile, he thought.
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