Hilling-Up Time in Gandougarae

XVIII

Part Two of The Wampum Keeper, 
a work in progress

Note:  Tahontaenrat = Huron  Arendarhonon = Huron  Chonnonton = Neutral

"I almost tasted the strawberries, that's for sure," Shalinka declared, gazing solemnly up at Sebequa and the Tahontaenrat healer Gayantgogwus. "I owe my life to you two."

The Arendarhonon woman placed a bowl of hominy on the bench beside the Chonnonton chief. "You'll find freshly picked strawberries in this," she replied in a voice shaking with emotion. "It is I who owe you, Shalinka. Had you not found me I'd never have made it back from Riqué."

Shalinka took her elbow and gently drew her down beside him. She looked on while he stood and let Gayantgogwus apply a poultice to the abscess on his right calf muscle.

"And as for me," Gayantgogwus exclaimed, it's not me but Sorihia you must thank when next you see her. It's her formula I've used on this mess," she added, rising stiffly to her feet. "That was a nasty cut you got from the Erie's sword."

Before Shalinka could get settled and muster a suitable word of thanks, Gayantgogwus had closed her medicine bundle and dashed off on her rounds.

The famous Tahontaenrat healer had been rushed off her feet for months. Gandougarae's longhouses were full not only with recuperating veterans from last season's bruising campaigns against the Eries but with desperately ill victims of a virulent influenza. Patients also awaited her attention in Gandachiragon and Sonnontouan five leagues to the west on the Genesee River, and in the Seneca capital Ganondagan a league to the north.

After Sebequa hurried off on her errands, Shalinka leaned back against the bark shingles on Gandougarae's council lodge porch and tilted his face to the morning sun. He thanked The Great Warrior for the fine summer morning, and for Gayantgogwus's help in getting rid of his high fever and the congestion in his lungs and for her skill in treating festering battle wounds. Thanks also went out for all of Sebequa's help, and for the help of her new Tahontaenrat mother at whose hearth he was an honoured guest.

After finishing his hominy, he gazed out at the town square in front of his bench and thought of the strawberry festival he attended just before the flu epidemic struck. Here was another reason to give thanks. What a joy it had been to take part again in this most ancient of all Iroquoian thanksgivings.

The Tahontaenrat faith keepers had begun the morning ceremony in the customary manner: with a report on the deaths and injuries sustained in the Erie war, and on the otherwise excellent health of Gandougarae's people. Following this had come the joyful songs of thanksgiving to the myriad helping spirit forces in the world.

The first spirit forces to be thanked were Gandougarae's people, the clan mothers and council chiefs, then the ordinary men, women, and children. The next to be thanked were the waters, and then the herbs, grasses, and other small plants, including of course the strawberry. Then it was the turn of the saplings and bushes, the trees, the three sisters, and finally the birds and game animals.

The Sky Beings were thanked last: the thunderers who made the rain, the winds that drove away disease, the moon and stars that provided light during the dark nights, the great sun oki Areskoui, and lastly, the earth shaper and dream sender Tarengawagon and his unfortunate grandmother Aataentsic who'd fallen through a hole in the sky clutching seeds of the three sisters, and of the strawberry.

In Ounontisaston, Shalinka recalled with a sigh, the order of thanksgiving had been reversed. The high chief Tsouharissen....

Furious shouts from across the square startled the wampum keeper out of this reverie. His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of a Tahontaenrat man beating his Erie slave. Chonnonton slaves often received similar treatment in the Seneca towns.

Other flu victims were with Shalinka in the square. Three sat at the far end of the porch bench, and upwards of sixty more lay dotted about the ground on blankets or bark mats. All were glad to be away from the quarantine cabins and out in the sunshine and soft summer breezes.

The deaths in Gandougarae were causing great distress to those who had lost loved ones. Many bereaved were bitter and depressed and suspicious as to the cause of their losses. Some blamed the Jesuits Dablon and Chaumonot who arrived in Onondaga just before the epidemic began. Local witches were also blamed, and one had been executed.

Shalinka gazed up at the wampums hung at the entrance to the council lodge. One held the Seneca promise of safe conduct given to the Tahontaenrat headman Atsan on the day of the Ounontisaston raid. Memories flooded in as he spotted this wampum.... of his nephew Cloweil at the hearth of the traitor Dotak... of the dying Atsan propped up by his lieutenants... of the Seneca runner refusing the traitor's wampum... of Dotak drunkenly gawping after her as she sped away....

Many Tahontaenrat had welcomed Atsan's lead. After the destruction of their villages in the Huron country and two years as refugees in the unstable Chonnonton capital, why wouldn't they? The Seneca promised them a new homeland, their own village and fields, their own language and customs.

Other Tahontaenrat had fought against the Seneca during the raid on Ounontisaston. Some of these people had been up in Skenchioe with the Petun and Chonnonton refugees when he and Iroquet arrived. Others had set off to join the Susquehannock.

Shalinka turned and glared at the two healthy elders Tehorhiongo and Atondo sitting midway down the bench. For most Tahontaenrat, and certainly for Atsan, the Seneca had offered another boon: a profound attachment to the pagan religion. Atsan detested Christianity. Like Tsouharissen, he believed the Black Robes, not the Iroquois, had destroyed the Hurons.

Tehorhiongo and Atondo were long time Christian converts who for five years had been proselytizing in the Seneca towns. The smooth scar on Shalinka's jaw tightened as he watched the two Christians pray over their rosaries. They were bolder than ever these days. And with good reason! Six more Black Robes had arrived at Onondaga, along with fifty French laymen and soldiers who were building a mission fort on the shores of Lake Gannentaa.

Not only did the pair bandy about the French shamans' bogus word "Hawenneyu." They muddled up the great sun oki with their God the Father's son Jesus, insisting that Areskoui was the agent and eyes of God and could see every human action.

A tingling sensation in the new skin forming around his abscess made Shalinka think of Gayantgogwus. She'd called this the healing itch. Gayantgogwus was one of many Iroquoians who criticized Christianity for having no great female celestial force for whom Mother Earth was the agent. Mary, she pointed out, was a mere earthling, and she warned of the dangers for women in erasing the female from the traditional design of an equality between the great spirit forces in the sky.

Sebequa scoffed at the idea of Christianity as a danger to women. After years of bad luck, she felt fortunate beyond measure to have replaced a beloved only daughter in a respected Tahontaenrat lineage whose members were encouraging her to pray openly to the Christian god.

A blue bird sat preening himself on the council lodge pole. When he flew off, Shalinka gazed again at the cluster of wampums. There was no mistaking the message in the belt with the streak of red paint. It was a warning to the Tahontaenrat people not to stray far from their new Seneca homeland.

The red streak also explained why Sebequa's new family wanted her to say her Hail Marys in public. The Seneca headman Onnonkenritaoui had just agreed to have the Black Robe Chaumonot - the one the Hurons called Echon - in his lands.

A fit of coughing caught Shalinka off guard. Onnonkenritaoui's show of enthusiasm for the one true god won't last long, he spluttered to himself between gasps. Now that the Eries are destroyed.

Another memory of Atsan came to his mind when the coughing stopped. Rumours were rife during Ounontisaston's final days. Atsan, it was said, had sent an envoy to Onondaga to meet with The Tadadaho and demand that the Tahontaenrat become a fully fledged member of the Iroquois League.

Crap! Shalinka growled. Atsan was lucky to get the privileges he did. Sixty years his people lived in the Huron country and only once did their headman speak at a Huron league council. Atsan was in no position to make demands at Onondaga....

A new ruckus started up across the square. A young woman had just finished relating her dream to a circle of friends, and now they were engaged in a noisy exchange as to its meaning. Soon, three of the friends rushed off, while the others sat down and continued their discussion with the dreamer.

The Chonnonton chief stretched out his bad leg and yawned. His head drooped onto his chest. Gandougarae's faith keepers were quick to thank the Iroquois Leaguefounders at their strawberry festival, he mused sleepily. As well they might, he muttered grimly, thinking of his powerful Onondaga ally The Jigonsaseh, Mother of Nations, who set the agenda at League councils.

Lucky for him.... the first Jigonsaseh... a Niagara Wolf chieftainess in his own lineage... helped Deganawidah build framework for peace... time of his long lived uncle's grandfather's grandfather ... time when Attigneenongnahac and Attignawantan form core of Huron league.... Deganawidah... Jigonsaseh's husband... Arendarhonon shaman from Bay of Quinte.... First Tadadaho... Onondaga chief... a deranged killer... Deganawidah and Jigonsaseh straighten out...win over...name him Hiawatha....

No mid-morning nap followed these drowsy thoughts. Shalinka's eyes snapped open to see - and hear - women, children, and a few old men, all with hoes, hurrying along the town's pathways. In the fields of the three sisters the corn was knee-high and the beans and squash were set to climb and run. It was hilling-up time in Gandougarae.

The matron of the fields and her lieutenants stood talking quietly at the edge of the square. Their main duties were over. All the workers knew where they were going, and each carried a bundle of brightly decorated sticks bearing personal signs to mark off work areas, call attention to completed work, and provide evidence in friendly competitions.

Many of the hundred or so workers were poor Tahontaenrat women, others were captive slaves. They would walk long distances to large crop fields deep in the woods. Others, such as Sebequa and her new clan sisters, would work the smaller fields in and around Gandougarae.

Shalinka eyed his empty hominy bowl. There was a rub again this year for the Tahontaenrat growers. A hefty portion of their harvest would go as tribute to the Seneca in Ganondagan.

Ach well, the Chonnonton chief murmured, we can be thankful this French sickness hasn't killed off so many there's no one left to work the fields....

In the wake of this thought, a horrific memory struck. He was back in Ounontisaston in the worst year of the Great Dying... weed-filled fields, stinking pox-ridden corpses....

He began to count the various types of hoe the field workers had fastened to their poles. Only a few were iron, most were hand-shaped sections of elk antler, or stone discs with notched edges.

After the field crews set off, he watched the return of the man and the two female workers who'd gone in search of suitable gifts for the perplexed dreamer. The two women soon picked up their hoes and bundles of sticks and hurried off. This meant their friend was satisfied with their gifts.

Tehorhiongo and Atondo turned to wish him well before leaving the bench. As they ambled off, he wondered again why so many older Tahontaenrat, especially those like himself who'd mingled with the French, hadn't fallen ill with this new sickness, or only been mildly ill. In Gandougarae, it was mostly babies and young people who died. This got him thinking about Sorihia's invisible bugs.

His hostess, Sebequa's new mother, came into the square with two Erie slaves. Robust, and with none of the complications of an abscessed battle wound, the highborn Tahontaenrat was recovering more quickly than Shalinka from her bout of flu. After settling in the sunlight, Marie Katrine - for such was her Christian name - dispatched the two Eries around the square with a kettle full of deer meat.

Shalinka gulped down his portion of stew, and, after marvelling again at his newfound appetite, promptly fell asleep. After this nap, he thought about the trip his hostess and her husband had taken the previous summer to the French settlements.

Garakonti and his wife had led the large party to Quebec to escort the Black Robes Chaumonot and Dablon to Onondaga. Like the Onondaga chieftainess, Marie Katrine was greatly impressed by her visit to the French colony. Both were astonished at the Frenchification of the young Huron girls taught by the Ursulines, and at the unflagging charity of the Grey and White sisters in the Hôtel-Dieu. Also, Shalinka recalled ruefully, like himself, they'd been captivated by the singing of the Christian Huron choristers.

On their way back from Quebec to Montreal, both women were instructed in the rudiments of the Catholic faith and baptised. Marie Therese was the baptismal name of the Onondaga chieftainess.

Shalinka gritted his teeth at the thought of all the Christian singing he endured in Gandougarae. How he longed to leap up and set out on his journey! To cross the Niagara River and see his homeland again! But the idea was absurd. It was days yet, Gayantgogwus said, before he could take short walks.

This fit of pique and frustration took its toll. Another bout of coughing set in and sharp pains pierced his chest. When he recovered, he began to think about the inroads Christians were making among the western Iroquois.

Headmen in nearly every town were vying for rights to the six new Black Robes. Marie Katrine's husband had already vanquished his competitors. Dablon and Chaumonot had long since expressed their gratitude at having him among their converts.

Old ways of life were being torn apart, as they'd been in the Huron towns. Christian factions now cut across lineages, clans, and fireside kinship groups. These vital networks of Iroquois society were at great risk. Soon converts would refuse to participate in the thanksgiving rituals, and then all would be lost.

Christian songs, Shalinka snorted. What do we learn from these arrogant French shamans and their songs? To feel bad about ourselves! They say we lead lives of sin, that our customs and practices are vile and filthy like stagnant water holes. They try to frighten us with pictures of the Devil, and they don't even believe in the Devil! French eyes never lie, he scoffed, recalling the time Ouane lied about his belief in the Devil.

Sometime later, he thought again of his Wolf clan ancestor Jigonsaseh. To his enormous relief, the stories of the famous Iroquois League founder kept by the wife of his long-lived uncle were once again accessible to him. The full recovery of his memory he attributed to having restored his clan totems to their rightful place in his tobacco pouch.

In his aunt's keepings, Jigonsaseh was the reincarnated daughter of Aataentsic whose own beloved daughter had died in childbirth, leaving the old woman alone with twin grandsons: the emotionally and mentally stable Sapling the creator, and the passionate and volatile Flint who'd gone insane. Jigonsaseh was also called The Corn Maiden because of an early-maturing strain of maize she'd given as a wedding present to her shaman husband Deganawidah.

The Onondaga chief Tadadaho, rabid killer and cannibal until his transformation, was a rebirth of Wrinkled Mind Flint who'd caused his grandmother and brother such trouble until he'd been soothed and consoled by....

The wampum keeper's memories of the founders of the Iroquois League ended abruptly when the brother of slain Seneca chief Ahiarantouan neared his bench.

Ahiarantouan had been one of ten high-ranking Senecas on a peace embassy to the French when he was killed by Mohawks. Coming on the heels of the murders of two other Seneca chiefs returning from Quebec, his death led to demands for an all-out war against the Mohawks, demands still on-going.

Ahiarantouan's aggrieved bother glowered at Shalinka on his way into the council lodge. Bad blood existed between the two men. Hodenio, another of the Seneca chief's brothers, had led an army in the raid on Ounontisaston and been killed on his way home by a Tahontaenrat warrior. Years earlier, Hodenio led the war party that murdered Shalinka's son and Étienne Chaboyer.

The Mohawks' three murders and not old resentments had brought Ahiarantouan's brother to Gandougarae. The League's peace chiefs had been trying for months to reconcile the two tribes, and agreements reached at last week's annual war council in Onondaga had satisfied many Senecas, but not Ahiarantouan's brother and widow.

The Tahontaenrat council was offering to hold another condolence ceremony for the bereaved family. And who knows, Shalinka muttered to himself, this could be the end of the matter. Peace might take hold... at least until some other boneheaded young buck decides to kill a chief, or two, or three.

This pessimistic thought set the wampum keeper pondering the age-old Iroquoian debate on the virtues of league governments versus high chiefdoms. The Iroquois League founders had hoped to end the incessant warfare among neighbouring tribes by creating a permanent confederate government with local autonomy. But the warfare hadn't ended.

And for good reasons, muttered Shalinka. The central fire at Onondaga can't dictate to the tribes and the tribal fires can't dictate to clans and families. At both fires, the chief who holds the wampum has only words in his quiver, and he speaks only for a segment of the people. Worse still, he has no jurisdiction over warriors.

Shalinka gazed for a time at the wampums on the council lodge pole. He'd overstated his case. The words underpinning the great laws of the Iroquois and Huron leagues - and for that matter the great law of Tsouharissen's high chiefdom - had in fact averted many family, clan, and tribal wars.

His eyes misted over as he thought of the Chonnonton high chief. Tsouharissen had combined in his person the roles of war chief, council chief, and spiritual leader and for forty years performed these roles brilliantly. He'd been an exceptional man in many ways, and there was the rub with high chiefdoms. Men and women of his calibre didn't come along in every generation, and when they did they couldn't be counted on to live such a long life.

Memories of the terrible tragedy that destroyed Tsouharissen's chiefdom surfaced. The high chief had returned from his last military campaign with a fourth wife, a young Tuscarora who gave birth to a gifted female child. He'd chosen this daughter as his successor, but his jealous senior wife murdered her, causing the young Tuscarora to commit suicide. He'd put to death his senior wife and the whole of her lineage. His own death followed soon after.

Shalinka leaned over and scratched his right shank, taking care not to disturb his poultice. League governments were probably the better bet, for the simple reason that good council chiefs were easier to come by than brilliant high chiefs.

The sight of Marie Therese talking to Atondo and Tehorhiongo provoked his ire. He thought of the mission fort at Gannentaa and the growing French colonies along the Great River. He recalled the tall ships he'd seen moored along the shores of the Ocean Sea, and the many reports of new English and Dutch trading forts. This ceaseless influx of Christians would eventually destroy the Wabanaki, Lenni Lenape, and Iroquois leagues. No one had understood this threat better than Tsouharissen.

Late in the afternoon, the hilling-up crews began to return to the square. As he watched them disperse to their hearths, he recalled as a small boy asking his uncle if Jigonsaseh really invented corn, and if Hiawatha invented wampum.

His uncle smiled and said no to both queries. What Jigonsaseh had done was encourage people to plant a new strain of corn that the ancient society of Niagara corn breeders had ready. As to the inventor of wampum, no one could say. White and black wampum, made not only from shell but from other materials as well, had been in use long before the Iroquois formed their league.

The principles underlying the function of white wampum as medicine, his uncle told him on another occasion, had come in a dream to a brilliant shaman.

In the dream, he learned that darkness and night signified mischief, illness, insanity, and witchcraft while sun and light signified health, strength, and good will. Light was life, light was mind, light was knowledge, and greatest being. So too were light's qualities, brightness, visibleness, transparency, and whiteness. They too were life, mind, knowledge, and greatest being.

The dreaming shaman also learned that the positive forces of the sun and light had sufficient medicine to counteract the universe's dark forces. And that white wampum and crystals were to be associated with the mental and emotional stability of humans, that is with their well being, harmony, and purposefulness of mind, knowledge, and greatest being. Tarengawagon's instructions to the shaman regarding the function of white wampum had from time immemorial formed the basis of all Iroquoian ritual.

On still another occasion, his uncle told him that Deganawidah rubbed the sick and unruly Tadadaho all over with strings of white wampum and restored to his body the powers necessary for clear thinking. This enabled the Onondaga chief to come to his senses, forget his injuries, and begin to work on an Iroquois peace plan.

After the Tadadaho's transformation, and renaming, he worked with Jigonsaseh and Deganawidah on the wording and ordering of the thirteen wampum strings of requickening. After much hard work of persuasion on their part - and others - the condolence ceremony was finally accepted by all five tribes as the Iroquois Way of preventing a revenge-seeking warrior from simply driving a hatchet into a tree and declaring a war, and his like-minded clan mother from rounding up food, weapons, and recruits.

As Shalinka sat contemplating the stories of his namesake uncle, the brother of Ahiarantouan, furious and fierce-eyed, stumbled blindly out of the council lodge and past his bench. Another heartsick Tadadaho spoiling for a fight, he murmured sadly.

Soon another memory of his long-lived uncle emerged. Humans who performed deeds of great benefit to their people, the first Shalinka had told him, were often identified with Sky People by way of a rebirth. Identification of Jigonsaseh with the daughter of Aataentsic, and both Deganawidah and Hiawatha with Sapling Tarengawagon were meant to garner admiration and respect for the three Iroquois league founders, and to encourage emulation of them.

A group of Onondaga False Faces arrived in Gandougarae in the early evening. Shalinka looked on avidly as the men sat down near his bench with their masks, canes, and turtle shell rattles.

Gayantgogwus was in the thick of the doings for the curing ritual. Under her guidance, the remaining flu victims were carried out of the fever cabins and settled close to a sacred fire the Onondaga women healers were laying in the centre of the square.

As he watched Marie Katrine and Sebequa tending the sick, Shalinka thought again of the recent war council at Onondaga. It had been no ordinary council fire! Not with a flu epidemic raging, and all-out war looming between Mohawks and Senecas, and certainly not with seven Black Robes hanging about the capital waiting to set up mission outposts!

All the League chiefs were present at that council fire, so too chiefs from the thirteen allied tribes living among the Iroquois, including Marie Katrine's husband. At first, only a few chiefs were keen to host the French. What turned the tide was support from chiefs wanting to trade with the French instead of the Dutch, and from chiefs wanting to placate their Huron Christians.

A fair distribution of Jesuits and French laymen proved difficult. As negotiations continued, the offer to Onnonkenritaoui to have the famous Echon set up a Seneca mission proved key to quelling his people's demands for all-out war against the Mohawks.

The main event for the Jesuits at the council fire was Echon's harangue on the one true god. This came after all the French laymen knelt, removed their hats and clasped their hands, and sang a hymn. Their singing delighted the chiefs, but Echon's account of the hymn as a plea for help from the spirit "who governs the whole world" had not been welcome.

Echon started his harangue by reminding his audience that while at Quebec they'd promised to listen carefully to his words about Jesus.

"Jesus was the son of god. He'd made himself into a man because of his love for all human beings. He was the master of all human beings. He'd arranged unending joys and pleasures in heaven for human beings who obeyed his commands. For those who refused, he'd kindled horrible fires in hell. Jesus caused his truths to be painted in pictures and written down in a book, and ordered copies of these to be carried throughout the world."

Echon ended his harangue by stating that it was only the desire to spread Jesus' good news that brought Black Robes to Onondaga. The beaver trade hadn't brought them hither. No! The Iroquois could continue to take their furs to the Dutch if they so wished. It mattered not a whit to the Black Robes.

French shamans not interested in beaver pelts! My arse! Shalinka growled.

A burst of light struck the wampum keeper's eyes. Jolted from his thoughts, he spied Sebequa across the crowded square. A glass bead rosary coiled around her upswept hair and dangling from it, beside the scar from the neck wound she'd received at Riqué, was a shiny crucifix reflecting the golden rays of the setting sun.

A flashing light from a Christian cross! From Sebequa's cross! At the very moment he'd heaped scorn on the Black Robes! Was it a sign? Had he been wrong to turn his back on the Christian god?

A vivid and frightening image appeared to him... the Frenchman La Jarrie lying headless in the tidal pool... the gold cross shining on his shoulder....

His left leg gave a sudden violent jerk striking the tarry poultice covering his abscess. Serves you right, he gasped, scowling down at his injured calf muscle. First you try to forget about that gold cross then you frighten yourself half to death with it!

After a few moments he peered across at Sebequa. The shiny crucifix was no longer visible.

No wonder he'd tried to forget that puzzle. He'd had no luck solving it! He'd made no mistake about the cross on La Jarrie. It was no old scar caught in the sunlight as the Black Robes claimed. The tattooed cross on the Frenchman's shoulder-blade had changed into a gold cross sometime after his beheading....

Sometime after his beheading....

A soft hissing sound escaped Shalinka's lips. He'd forgotten he'd solved the 'when' piece of the puzzle, or rather Sebequa had solved it for him. During the siege of Trois-Rivières, she'd been put in a canoe carrying the Black Robe Poncet to Agnié. The Mohawk who killed La Jarrie captained that canoe, and she heard him describe the mingy black dot cross he'd seen on the Frenchman's shoulder after he'd beheaded him.

The mystery was too deep! La Jarrie hadn't even been a Catholic! He was on the other side in the French wars. Perhaps the Huguenot god was more powerful than the Black Robes' god. Maybe he'd wanted La Jarrie to be the last emperor. And what if The Great Warrior had sent a bolt from the blue and changed the tattooed cross into a shining gold cross, knowing that he Shalinka would see it!

Numerous signs had told him to become a true Christian convert. It wasn't just his vision at the Rock of the Shaman, of Thunderbird with what appeared to be the face of the crucified Jesus. There had been his vision at Quebec, where he'd not doubted the look on The Great Warrior's face or the gold cross on his shoulder feathers.

But instead of following these signs, he'd reneged on his baptismal vows even as Ouane poured the water over his head. He'd convinced himself that his visions signified only that he must redouble his efforts to get Iroquoian people to give up their ghastly heart ceremony. The truth was he'd had no success in this endeavour. The Black Robes' Christians were having better luck at ending the cult of the Chosen Ones than he was.

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As dusk descended over Gandougarae, the False Faces prepared to dance. As they did so, the town's clan mothers and their helpers filled the bowls of the flu victims with a thinned strawberry mash.

A sombre Sebequa ladled a portion of this elixir into Shalinka's bowl. The wampum keeper looked up at the Arendarhonon woman and murmured a few words of condolence.

Two hours ago, devastating news from Quebec had reached Gandougarae's Hurons. Weeks earlier, enraged by the Jesuits' mission to Onondaga, a large party of Mohawks had landed on the Île d'Orléans and concealed themselves between the church and the Jesuits' fortified house in the Huron village. Next morning, as the Hurons set off for their fields after saying mass in the church, the Mohawks ambushed them. Some Hurons found refuge with the Jesuits; seventy others, including many young women, were killed or captured. Sebequa lost four of her oldest and dearest friends.

The Mohawks were careful not to harm the French on the island, to do so would have violated their peace treaty with Onontio. After forcing the captive Hurons into forty canoes they paddled past Quebec's wharf in broad daylight. They compelled the Hurons to sing, in order to mock the Hurons and French who stood helplessly by on the river bank. When they reached Trois-Rivières, a Jesuit had visited the Mohawk's camp to console the Hurons, but no French attempt was made to rescue them.

As the flames of the sacred fire leapt higher, the Masks began their sacred rituals. Almost immediately Shalinka's mind eased. He'd done what he could to make amends to Sebequa for colluding with Kiota to trade her precious corn for brandy.

At the battle of Riqué he'd been lucky enough to save her life, and to bring her reassuring news of her two captive children in Agnié. In Onondaga, he'd arranged for her adoption by Marie Katrine by promising The Jigonsaseh that he'd encourage his Wolf brothers and sisters in the Northwest to join their clan folk in Onondaga.

Sebequa was going to be fine. Now that the Black Robes were starting a Seneca mission, some of her remaining Île d'Orléans friends might choose to join her in Gandougarae. And peace between Seneca and Mohawk meant she might see her kids again.

A feeling of optimism took hold. He felt the healing itch again in the skin forming around his abscess. He was recovering from the Erie's sword cut and he'd survived this new French sickness. He'd begin his travels soon. And he'd get up that mountain in the Northwest again too, the one he'd climbed as a youth with Tsouharissen. Maybe there the answer to the gold cross puzzle would come.

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