Alsoomse and Wanchese -- Chapter Two, Scene One

 

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

Windigo: cannibal monster (plural: Windigoag)

Characters Mentioned

* historically identified person

Alsoomse (Independent) –17, protagonist

Machk (Bear) – 17, Nuna and Wapun’s brother, friend of Wanchese

Nuna (Land) – 16, Alsoomse’s friend across the lane

Odina (Mountain) – 16, Alsoomse’s friend across the lane

Pules (Pigeon) – 11, Odina’s sister

Sokanon (Rain) – 18, Sooleawa’s daughter and Alsoomse and

Wanchese’s cousin

Sooleawa (Silver) – 39, Nadie’s sister and Alsoomse and Wanchese’s

aunt

Wapun (Dawn) – 12, Nuna’s amd Machk”s sister

Commentary

Chapter Two serves mostly two purposes: revelation of character traits and detailed aspects of Algonquian culture.

Scene One

“Alsoomse, tell us a story.” Odina’s sister Pules asked.

Alsoomse, her friend Odina, Pules, Alsoomse’s friend Nuna, and Nuna’s young sister Wapun were seated on mats in front of Aunt Sooleawa’s longhouse. It was mid-morning. They were preparing the day’s late meal.

Sokanon was tending the fire under the large clay pot in which a corn, bean, and fish stew would be cooked. Kernels of corn, bean pods, and deboned fish lay close by in a reed basket. Sokanon had poured into the pot the last of the water she had carried from the creek in her long, hollow gourd. Alsoomse, Odina, and Nuna were grinding corn kernels into flour, each using her family’s large stone mortar and pestle. Pules and Wapun were cracking open walnut shells, centering each shell in the depression of a nutting stone and striking it with a flat rock. Soon they would be grinding the nuts into a paste, repeatedly rolling pestles over their shallow mortars. The walnut paste would be mixed with the corn kernel flour that the older girls were simultaneously preparing. The resultant mixture would be baked in shallow clay pots over a low fire to become bread.

Her shell earrings swinging, Odina grinned. “Oh yes, tell us, most excellent story teller. Tell us one we have not heard more than twice.”

Nuna straightened her back, stood, adjusted the deerskin apron that hung from her waist to her knees. Indentations of the weave of the mat upon which she had knelt marked her knees. She was a broad-bodied girl from breasts to hips. Of the four eligible, unmarried girls working in front of the longhouse, she was the broadest, Odina the largest, Alsoomse the strongest, and Sokanon the prettiest. “If this story is long, I need to walk a little,” Nuna declared. She stepped past Sokanon, stretched her arms, flexed her knees, twice circled the fire.

“Complaints. All I am hearing are complaints. I might not tell any story.” Alsoomse raised her left eyebrow.

Pules and Wapun immediately straightened. Watching them, Nuna and Odina laughed.

“Really, Alsoomse,” Nuna said, feigning displeasure. “Doing this work is bad enough.”

Alsoomse raised her right eyebrow.

Nuna laughed.

“You may begin.” Odina knelt heavily on her mat. “You may now put me to sleep.”

Pules pointed her rock at her sister. “She does not mean that! She wants to hear your story like I do!”

“Tell your story,” Wapun said, her legs crossed, her netting stone and rock placed beside her right thigh. At twelve, a cohattayough older than Pules, she was demonstrably more perceptive, knowledgeable. “I know you want to, and I know you know we want you to.”

Alsoomse stuck out her tongue. She touched her shell-bead necklace at its lowest place, put her hands on the mat next to her knees, repositioned her kneeling body. “Nuna, Odina, go take a walk to the creek and back. This story is long!”

“Oh, just … start,” Odina said.

“You will need to work while you listen! All four of you! You know that!”

Nuna grimaced.

Alsoomse turned toward Pules and Wapun. Pointing toward the mainland, she said: “Long ago, but not so long ago, monsters walked this land. Windigoag -- giant cannibals, half human -- would hide next to deer paths behind thick branches of pine and cedar, waiting to snatch children! Catching one, a windigo would tie the child’s arms and legs with vines.” Alsoomse leaned closer. “Imagine.” She paused, hoping to mesmerize Pules with her eyes. “Outside the cave where he lives, the mean windigo builds a great fire. Using more vines, he ties the child to a tree limb. He places the far end of the limb on top of a large log. Walking around the fire holding the other end of the limb, he brings the tied-up child, a boy, over the fire where he slowly roasts him! When the boy is cooked, …” She made a loud, gnawing sound.

Wapun laughed.

Alsoomse shook her head, mock-admonished Wapun with her right forefinger.

She continued. “Their parents, wondering where their children had gone, would go looking for them. Sometimes, if the windigo was still hungry, he snatched the parents and roasted them, too!” Fighting the urge to laugh, she forced her face to appear sober.

Seated next to Wapun, Nuna stiffened. She pointed past her sister’s right ear. “Look! A windigo! Behind that tree!”

Wapun twisted about.

Nuna laughed.

Twisting back, Wapun glared. “I was not afraid.”

“Of course not, sister. Of course not. We all saw.” Nuna smirked.

Wapun looked instantly at Alsoomse, who had kept her face serious.

Alsoomse resumed. “Not only were the windigoag looking to make children their special meal! Huge animals were hunting to eat human meat! Did you know that, Pules?”

The young girl’s eyes and mouth appeared frozen.

Alsoomse waited.

“My father never told me!” she whispered. She dropped her rock. Odina giggled.

“You were too little,” Wapun said. “He did not tell you because he did not want to frighten you.” Alsoomse saw that Wapun was straining not to laugh.

Pules’s brows crowded the bridge of her nose.

“Stop your talking!” Sokanon, standing close to the fire, exclaimed.

Alsoomse’s head and those of her listeners turned in unison.

Smoke swirled past Sokanon’s body. “You need to get busy! This stew cannot wait forever for your bread!”

“Crack and grind those walnuts!” Nuna ordered the two young girls.

Alsoomse pressed her pestle against her corn kernels. “One grinding motion with each sentence,” she said, smiling. “All of you. That includes me. Ready?” She watched them position their pestles over their mortars and rocks over their walnuts.

“The people in all the villages were miserable! Something had to be done!” She pressed down with her pestle. The others followed her example. “Fortunately” – Alsoomse made her voice joyful – “fortunately, they worshiped the sun! Because the great Sun Father liked them, he decided to help them.” She pressed. They pressed and cracked. “He changed himself into a handsome hunter, came down out of the sky, then married a beautiful woman from the North!”

Pules raised her head. “Where the Weapemeoc live?”

Alsoomse shook her head. “Much farther north.”

“Too bad.” Odina frowned. “Just once! Just once I would like to see a handsome hunter walk past me and say, ‘Odina, marry me!’”

“The day that happens,” Nuna answered, “you will see turtles chasing cranes!”

“Grind!” Sokanon ordered. She reached into her reed basket, brought out bean pods, dropped them into the boiling water.

Alsoomse rotated her pestle against the inside of her mortar. “The beautiful woman gave birth to twin boys. Handsome boys, very brave. They grew very fast; and then, suddenly, they stopped growing. They grew to be no taller than you, Wapun. But they were strong, and they were very intelligent, and were full of questions.”

“What kind of questions?’

“‘Who is our father?’ one of them asked not long after they had stopped growing.”

“Grind,” Sokanon reminded.

“What did she say? Did they believe her?”

“She did not tell them exactly. She said they were special. Two days later she carried out of her longhouse two bows about their height and two quivers full of arrows.” Lowering her chin, Alsoomse resumed grinding. The young girls waited, their rocks suspended above their nutting stones. A drift of smoke temporarily encircled them.

“Why?!” Pules exclaimed.

“She told them that their father had left the bows and arrows for her to give to them. Then he had left. Now grind! Pound!”

They did, almost guiltily, Alsoomse thought. Again she hid her amusement.

“The twins were to use them when they became old enough. The mother brought out of her longhouse several magic rabbit sticks. ‘Take these also and use them but only if you have to,’ she told them.”

“Rabbit sticks? What are rabbit sticks?”

“Sticks covered with rabbit fur,” Alsoomse answered, keeping her mouth small.

“Why would anybody want to put rabbit fur on sticks?” Wapun frowned. “You are making this up.”

“No, the great Sun Father wanted fur on them. There was magic in the fur. Time for two more grinds. And pounds.” She made semi-circles with her pestle.

After the others had acted, she continued. “The boys wanted to go hunting. Their mother told them to stay far away from the monster animals that could swallow them. ‘And stay away from windigoag! You are just the right size to roast!’ So …” Alsoomse made a what-can-you-do, futile gesture. “Being boys, they thought they could do anything!”

“Like your brother Machk,” Pules said, addressing Wapun.

“The mother warned them not to go to the land across the water because there was a large lake there where a monster wolf lived that loved to eat people. So, being boys, that is where they went! Grind!”

Engrossed, Nuna and Odina bent over their mortars. Wapun and Pules cracked two walnuts.

“They reached the lake when the sun was high, glimpsed the entire shoreline, saw tall trees with leaves of different shades of green. ‘Where is that monster wolf?’ one of them asked. ‘He probably sees us and is hiding.’ ‘You are wrong, brother. See? Over there!’ The wolf was bigger than a longhouse. ‘Quick, hide!’”

“Where is that handsome hunter you wanted to meet, Odina?” Nuna laughed. “Never where you want him when you need him!” She moved the tip of her right forefinger across her grinning lips.

Alsoomse nodded. “The giant wolf saw them! Staring through the leaves of a large wax myrtle, the boys saw the wolf lower his snout into the lake. In no time at all the wolf drank the entire lake dry! Staring at the shrub, the wolf advanced across the lake bottom. ‘We cannot outrun him!’ the smarter twin cried. They jumped out in front of the shrub and shot their arrows. The wolf’s sides were so tough the arrows did not stick! He was now as angry as he was hungry.” Alsoomse stopped, pressed her pestle down upon a new batch of corn kernels.

“Tell us!” Pules cried.

“What happened?” Their heads turned. Sokanon had stepped away from a sudden, breeze-driven, horizontal surge of smoke.

So. She had a fifth listener! Alsoomse laughed. She redirected her attention to her two friends and their young sisters. “As if they were not in enough danger, the wolf was carrying magic sticks. He threw one of them at them; they saw it coming; they ducked; it passed over their heads! Cursing, the wolf threw his second stick. This time the boys leaped high and the stick passed under their feet!”

“Small but quick!” Odina marveled, pretending incredulity.

“If one of them were ten cohattayoughs older, he could become your pretend husband,” Nuna said.

“Better a handsome pretend one than a big, fat, slow one.” Odina angled her head, for an instant grinned.

“Grind!” Alsoomse waved her pestle. She frowned. Nuna’s belittlement of Odina, disguised as teasing, needed to stop. She looked sternly at Pules. “So, are you ready for the end of the story?!”

Pules nodded, the rest of her body still.

Alsoomse repositioned her knees. “I am sore. Maybe I should take a walk to the creek.”

“No!” the young girls exclaimed.

“All right then. Even if my knees hurt.” She looked at each of the girls. “As you would expect, each boy threw one of his rabbit sticks at the wolf. Each stick struck the wolf in the head. Down went the wolf, immediately dead!”

Both girls stared at her.

“Just like that? A wolf that big?!”

“Pules, the sticks were magic. Anything can happen with magic!” Wapun shook her head.

“There is more.” Alsoomse’s smile widened. “The boys took out their antler knives and cut out the wolf’s heart. They gathered up their two rabbit sticks; and, because they were intelligent boys, they retrieved the magic sticks that the wolf had thrown. Why did they cut out the heart, you might ask? To prove to their mother what they had done.”

“What happened when they got home?”

“They told their mother what they had done; but she did not believe them, so they showed her the heart. The people in the village had a great celebration.”

“Then what? Did the windigoag get them?”

“That, Pules, is a story for another time.” Alsoomse looked at each girl. “So the lesson of this story is …?”

“Make friends with a handsome hunter.” Nuna placed her hands above her hip bones, leaned her head back, laughed.

“Tie the hunter up until he promises he will marry you,” Odina quipped.

      “Be bold,” Wapun answered, “but only if the gods want to help you.”