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
* Clarke, Richard – 37, master of the Delight
* Gilbert, Humphrey – Colonizer who dies at sea at age of 44
* Granganimeo (He Who Is Serious) – 33, Roanoke weroance and Wingina’s brother
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
Sooleawa (Silver) – 39, Nadie’s sister and Alsoomse and Wanchese’s
aunt
Tihkoosue (Short) – 13, Granganineo’s son and Hurit’s step-son
* Wanchese (Take Flight off of Water) – 20, protagonist
* Wingina – 34, current mamanatowick and Granganimeo’s brother
Map of Sable Island
Scene Two
Humphrey Gilbert and his crew sensed how close to Sable Island’s rocks the Squirrel, riding the turbulent waves, had approached. If he dared to put out to sea, how many days or weeks would it be before he would be able to return? On this island roamed wild pigs and cattle, set ashore decades ago by Portuguese explorers. Here existed the necessary food supply for his planned settlement! The alternative was to return to the Queen disgraced! The Newfoundland fishermen had warned him about Sable Island, about how too many ships had been destroyed on its rocks. “Approach it in the best of conditions. And lead with your smallest ship.” Well, in both instances he had done the opposite.
He had spurned the advice of the Delight’s master, Richard Clarke.
“If you must, utilize a south-west-south course.”
Clarke had contradicted Gilbert’s intended west-north-west direction. “That will take you to disaster, Admiral. The wind is at south and night is at hand. Unknown sands lay a great way off the land.” Gilbert had had to threaten to bring down Elizabeth’s wrath upon Clarke to force the master to comply.
Slanting rain pelted him. He turned his face away from its force. Minutes passed. Sailors were staring at him, turning their faces when he attempted to make eye contact. He would wait a bit longer!
If the fog lifted, he could then be certain. If not, …
The waiting was interminable! He stared, at drifting, amorphous shapes.
A ferocious blast of wind caused him to slip and then fall on the rain-drenched deck. He careened down the deck’s slope, his right leg striking stanchions. Adjusting to the roll of the ship, gripping a foremast spar, painfully, he stood. The boards beneath his feet trembled. Fear constricted his throat.
“Admiral! Here!”
Gilbert hesitated, then followed the beckoning sailor to a cluster of four seamen just aft of broadside. There! The fog had opened. Gilbert's lead ship, the Delight, his largest, was coming apart on dark rocks. And in the water . . . the ship's crew: heads, flailing arms. Miraculously, a boat in the water, just beyond, in one eye-blink, capsized. Churning bodies, disappearing. Gone!
For an hour Gilbert’s two ships maintained their positions. Then he ordered their departure. All one hundred of the Delight’s crew had perished. Numbed with guilt, he retired to his cabin.
Scene Three
“This had better be the tree you want. I am hungry.” Granganimeo’s son, Tihkoosue, glanced out of the shadows of the tops of witch hazel to view the sunny expanse of field they had crossed thirty minutes ago.
“A good bow starts with the best wood. Hickory is best, ash is good, witch hazel, which we have all about, will do. The first thing you have to learn is patience. Making a bow requires most of all patience.” It was not Wanchese’s idea to teach this boy of thirteen cohattayoughs how to make bows and arrows and – afterward, he assumed – how to hunt.
Granganimeo had come to him two afternoons past while he had been shaping flint arrowheads. “That is what my son needs to learn. Come. Let us walk.” The old woman watching, they had left Sooleawa’s longhouse headed toward the landing place, the smoke of fires drifting above them and the limbs of loblolly pine. Wanchese, trailing, had watched his weroance’s bare feet avoid cones and the ends of cut off vines. Stopping in a secluded space shrouded by wax myrtle and thick spruce, close to the recently expanded burial ground, Granganimeo – his arms folded across his chest – had scrutinized him. Sensing what was about to be said, Wanchese had felt imposed upon.
“It is hard for me to say this about my son.” Granganimeo had tweaked his neck. “You must not repeat what I am about to say. It is only because Wingina and I recognize you to be strong in character, skillful in providing meat, and, we believe, brave in battle – and because you are Matunaagd’s son – that I say this to you.” Granganimeo had squinted, deepened the furrows across his forehead. “That I place my trust in you.”
Wanchese had waited.
“Tihkoosue is a disappointment. Boys his age have already learned the skills of hunting. They make their own bows and arrows. They play the hoop game, they shoot at tree stumps from different distances. Eagerly! They hunt with young braves. Tihkoosue does none of this. Yet he expects to become a weroance. He expects everything to be given to him. He must be taught otherwise.”
Wanchese had shifted his weight, touched his dangling tobacco sack.
“You know what I want you to do.”
Wanchese had nodded. The large turkey feather, its stem inserted in the groove at the top of his forehead, had bobbed.
“It will take much of your time.” Granganimeo’s crossed forearms had covered partially the square-shaped sheet of copper dangling from his neck.
“I know he is willful,” Wanchese had answered. He had felt he had the right to criticize. “He will not listen to me if he does not listen to you.”
“You have my permission to make him listen. I have seen how you reject weak character. I also know that you are fair-minded. Treat my son as he deserves.”
“I will not be easy with him.”
Granganimeo had smiled. He had touched his chin, then nodded. “I am pleased.”
#
Wanchese concluded his inspection of the witch hazel trunk. “This one will do.” He turned to face the boy. How small Tihkoosue was for his age. He remembered Kitchi to be as tall and two cohattayoughs younger. The bow they had made and the bow he would force this weakling to make would be close to the same length.
“Good. Now we can eat.”
“Now you will watch me mark the dimensions of my bow. Then you will mark yours.” Wanchese stared at the tree. He removed from the leather pouch, attached to the waistband of his apron, a tough but pliant section of leather and his flint knife. “Watch.”
He knelt upon the soft earth. Reaching behind his back for his apron waistband, he secured his tobacco sack. He removed it, untied its strings, and opened it. He poured bits of tobacco leaves into the palm of his left hand. He stood. “Tree, I thank you for giving me some of your wood. May the bow I make be strong and send my arrows fast and straight.” He sprinkled the palm’s contents judiciously around the base of the trunk.
Facing the boy, he said: “You must remember always to thank the trees you use and the animals you kill for their sacrifice.”
“I know that!”
Wanchese ignored the petulance. Using his knife, he commenced to cut a line approximately five feet long down the tree trunk. “This takes effort,” he said, “because of the bark. You see that I hold the knife with this deerskin hide. “
“I see that!”
“Then you know the reason.”
Tihkoosue did not answer.
“I cut to about two hands’ length from the bottom of the trunk. Then I cut across. About half a hand in length. Then I cut up the trunk the same length as before when I began. Then I cut across to meet where I started. You are to start now on the tree trunk next to mine. The wood will do for a beginner’s bow.” He removed from his pouch a second knife and a section of deerskin. He placed them beside the adjacent tree trunk and laid beside them his pouch of tobacco. He started to cut deeply the first of the two, long, parallel lines. Hearing no movement, he said, “It will be very long before we leave.”
“I want to eat.”
“We will eat when I eat.” He continued cutting.
Halfway finished with his parallel cutting, he heard the boy’s footsteps. He did not look. More movement. He heard: “Take this tobacco, tree, because I have to take some of your wood.” Peeking, Wanchese witnessed Tihkoosue sprinkling bits of tobacco leaves.
“Your cut has to be shorter in length,” Wanchese said. “A half an arm shorter, I think.” He continued his cutting, giving the boy seemingly no attention.
“This is hard!” Tihkoosue exclaimed. “How do you expect me to do this?!”
“Like everybody else your age.” He reached the top of his second lengthy cut. “Almost done,” he said.
“I need help.”
“It is a good thing your friends do not see you.”
“I do not have friends! I do not care who sees me!”
“Ah!”
Wanchese finished his second horizontal cut. The boy had marked half the distance of his first cut. “You are doing all right.”
“But it is hard!”
“The hard part comes after we eat.”
Tihkoosue turned, glared. “How?”
“After we eat. Hurry up. I am hungry.” Wanchese grinned.
Thirty minutes later the boy had finished. Flexing the fingers of his right hand, he watched Wanchese make a fire, afterward build a platform of sticks over the flames to cook two moderate-sized bass taken from his previous day’s catch.
Each ate silently.
After awhile the boy asked: “Did you do this with Kitchi?”
Wanchese felt instant pain. “Yes,” he said, tardily.
“How did he do?”
“He complained a lot.”
Wanchese recalled their outing.
“It is hard,” Tihkoosue had said. Everything is hard. It is meant to be. Everybody does what is expected of him. Everybody works together. The gods smile. Even Kiwasa, if he is given enough tobacco. Together we survive, stay strong, defeat our enemies. He had said all of this to Kitchi a popanow before the boy’s death. Unlike this selfish boy, his brother had been willing to work. He had been curious about all things, keen for exploration and adventure. It had been his undoing.
“Was it a good bow?”
“Good enough for a boy his size. He was able to kill rabbits with it.”
“Did you take him hunting?”
“I did.”
“Is hunting hard?”
“Everything is hard the first time.” He paused, licked his fingers, reached with his knife for the unclaimed half of the second bass, lying across two sticks elevated two feet above the fire. “It gets easier.”
They returned to the tree trunks. “Watch me while I cut the lines deeper. As deep as the distance of your little finger. “This will be hard work. Then we wedge the wood out using these pieces of deer antler and that hard rock I brought out of the canoe. The sun will be low when we finish. You should know.”
“Did you help Kitchi?”
“Sometimes, when he asked.” Not watching him, Wanchese anticipated the boy’s next question. “He did not ask that much,”
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