Original Death (27 page)

Conawago touched Duncan's arm. A group of newcomers, one of them wearing European clothes and a wide-brimmed black hat, had appeared in the shadows and were urgently speaking among themselves. As he watched, all but two retreated toward the river landing. The remaining two approached the Council ring. One of them, wearing a doeskin shirt with ornate quillwork, was being urged into the ring by his companion, a tribesman who wore the cut-down blue jacket of a British navy officer.
Custaloga rose and paced around the ring, pointing to the newcomer. “It is the nephew of Custaloga,” Conawago whispered. “He has been living among the Senecas, in the West. He is called Black Fish, once a mighty warrior.” The man being brought into the ring no longer had the appearance of a great warrior. His belly bulged out, his face was aged beyond his years. Yet as Custaloga related Black Fish's history and his blood ties with those present, then draped a strand of white wampum over his nephew's hand, he was greeted with sober deference.

The man spoke too fast for Duncan to follow, but he saw Conawago's face tighten as he listened. “Black Fish has visited all the major settlements of the League to explain that he has the same dream every night,” Conawago explained. “Such a dream will be taken as an important sign by the tribes, one that can never be ignored.” As Duncan leaned closer the old Nipmuc began translating the man's exact words.

“Now is the time of night that the graves gape wide and let forth the ghosts!” Black Fish exclaimed in a louder orator's voice, raising his face toward the rising moon.

Conawago's translation ended as Black Fish's speech grew more animated, and even louder. The Nipmuc stared in mute surprise, worry etching his face. The middle-aged warrior was shouting now, leaping about and swinging his arms, jerking his body and crying out in pain from invisible wounds. He was acting out a terrible struggle. As he finished he dropped to his knees and raised his hands toward the heavens and began repeating the same phrases over and over. Duncan needed no translation. “The Revelator is sent by the gods! The Revelator is our father!” he cried out. “The Revelator is sent by the gods! The League will die without the Revelator!” He shouted louder and louder, flailing his arms against his chest as if possessed until finally collapsing onto the ground.

The man in the blue jacket rushed forward to help Black Fish to his feet and escort him away. His speech had sapped all his strength. Conawago studied him intensely as he disappeared among the onlookers. Duncan saw that the other elders watched as well, most with deep alarm on their faces.

“His story spreads around to every Iroquois hearth, exciting all those who hear it,” Conawago explained. “Black Fish has been there, to the other side, Duncan! Sometimes he is abruptly summoned and falls down and is instantly transported there, always to the same place. At first he wanders in a thick fog but then spirits of the long dead find him and take him to a huge bark lodge.” Conawago paused, gazing into the fire. He was clearly troubled by Black Fish's message. “In it sits Dekanawidah and the other great chiefs who were the founders of the Iroquois League, and his heart fills with joy. But then the ghost of a huge Englishman approaches the founders from behind, raising a sword, intending to stab the ancient one, to kill the first god. Black Fish then sees behind the intruder the shapes of the other original spirits, lying dead with knives in their hearts. Spirits. The spirits have been killed! Suddenly a man runs past Black Fish and wrestles the Englishman. It is the half-king, and he beats down the Englishman and shouts out that he will save the founders from the other English demons, shaped like humans but with horses' heads, who approach through the mist. Then the spirits declare that the half-king is their revelator, who shall speak for them on earth. Dekanawidah declares that if the League does not listen then the places they hold sacred, the places that connect the Iroquois to the other side, will be destroyed. That which cannot fall will fall. That which cannot burn will burn. And when all the original spirits die, the gates to the other side will be closed forever. ”

Conawago took a long, heavy breath. The Nipmuc was clearly shaken by the words. “He says after his first vision he found the Revelator lying in the forest with bears sitting all around him as if to protect him, and though the Revelator was dead, the biggest of the bears bent over him and breathed into his mouth and the dead man sprang back to life. Ever since, the Mingoes bend their knee to him, and now the Haudenosaunee must as well if they wish to survive.”

The Council had no response to the terrible pronouncements of Black Fish. Most of the Council members silently stared into the fire. Suddenly the old sachem Atotarho rose, followed by the other members
of the Council. The leader spoke a quick syllable, and the silence was broken, the Council dismissed.

As Duncan turned toward Conawago, the oldest of the matriarchs, who had sat behind Atotarho, appeared at their side. “We wish you to come with us,” she said in a near whisper, as if wanting to avoid being overheard, then introduced herself as Adanahoe.

As they passed through the palisade wall, Custaloga joined them, holding a torch. He greeted Conawago as an old friend and guided them to the top of the ridge overlooking the town.

“Onondaga Castle has been built half a dozen times, in different places but always near a sacred ground to keep the Council anchored to the spirits,” Custaloga said when he halted. “We do not speak openly of such places. Many in the tribes would not know exactly how to find them. The Council members know and sometimes take their families there, or young ones who show promise of becoming a chieftain.” The old sachem studied the town below, lit by the moon and torches, then led them up a steep ridge behind the first, along a path that was a channel between high boulders. Soon they reached a flat near the top, an expanse of ledge rock where stones were strangely twisted and misshapen. “The Mouth of Dekanawidah we call this place,” Custaloga explained. “For many generations we have come here to listen. The voice from the other side was low, like a whisper. Often we could not understand it, but it was always reassuring because we knew it came from the other side.”

He halted at a gnarled piece of rock in the center of a shallow bowl of solid stone. Surrounding the bowl were boulders as high as a man's waist, painted with tribal symbols. The center rock was shaped roughly like a human head, and a strong cool current of air blew from the crack that was its mouth.

“I came to sit with it last night. I stayed all night, speaking old words in the hope it might heal itself. But it will speak no more to us,” Custaloga said in a melancholy tone, and he lowered the torch.

Duncan saw now how the rock around what had been a narrow mouth was chipped and broken and the surface of the rock itself strangely blistered.

“I would always come here on the night of the full moon. Last month when I arrived it was on fire. The rock was on fire!” The old man explained in an anguished voice. “I never would have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. And now the mouth will speak no more.” The sachem looked up at them. “Then tonight Black Fish spoke, who has not been here for years. That which cannot fall will fall, he said. The side of the mountain fell over a sacred cave near the Oneida towns. The Oneida had honored the spirits there for as far back as memory reaches. Now that which cannot burn has burned, and the gods stop speaking with us.” The old chief wiped his hand along the rock and raised it, spilling out grey powder. “It is dust.”

Duncan bent low to the stone and rubbed his finger along the surface. A dark greasy residue came away on his finger. He sniffed it. It was not gunpowder, nor any substance he knew. It would have been easy enough to smash the mouth with a hammer, but rock could not burn.

“It is dust,” Custaloga repeated in a mournful tone. “Without the spirits we become dust.”

No one replied.

By the time their silent, troubled procession returned to the palisade, the Iroquois families had dispersed, but there was new activity outside the Council lodge. The sachems had held their meeting before the inhabitants of the Castle and now continued their business more privately, within the lodge. Custaloga motioned Conawago and Duncan inside, following the other elders. Duncan paused outside the entrance and quickly scanned the shadows, finding Kass with her arm around Ishmael's shoulder. The Oneida woman nodded at Duncan. She would stay with the boy as the sacred work of the Council proceeded.

The longhouse was like no other Duncan had ever seen. The beams that supported the large structure were carefully worked, bound with joints and pins, the supporting posts all carved with images of forest life. To the left of the entry was one of the chambers typically used as a family's apartment, separated by walls of sewn skins. But this chamber held two older women. One, an elegant looking woman whose braids
had red yarn woven through them, was solemnly stringing beads while at her side the second chanted a low song. They were assembling a wampum belt, one of the official messages sent from the Grand Council, said to be empowered by the spirits. Above them, arrayed on plank shelves, were cylinders of birch bark bound with sinew. A similar container lay before the women. The containers all held wampum belts, he realized, some probably going back generations. He was looking at the archive of the League of the Haudenosaunee.

Beyond the chamber was a great open space extending the full width of the building and twice as deep. The Council members were sitting in a circle, some on low split log benches, some on fur cushions around a large fire ring where fragrant wood burned. As Conawago began leading Duncan toward one of the empty benches near the back, Custaloga motioned them in the opposite direction. They hesitated, glancing uncertainly at each other. The chief was directing them to an open place beside himself and Atotarho, a place of great honor beside the perpetual hearth.

As Duncan and Conawago completed the circle of the Council, Atotarho began an invocation of the spirits, extending a smoldering shank of tobacco to each of the four directions. One of the old women behind the sachems began a singsong chant, pausing at intervals for others to respond. “
Ak wah
,” the sachems repeated in unison at each pause. Yea truly.

Duncan found himself studying the chamber from which the great League was governed. Garlands of feathers hung along the wall behind the speakers, some composed entirely of hawk and eagle feathers, others entirely of the red and yellow feathers of small songbirds. Battered war axes hung between two such garlands, cornhusk dolls between two others. Along the adjacent walls hung robes of fur and feather and stretched doeskins adorned with figures of animals, trees, and many symbols Duncan did not recognize. Some of the skins seemed to be of great age, and he realized they told stories of events from prior centuries. He saw Conawago's eyes straying as well, and he knew the old Nipmuc yearned to study the robes and chronicle skins.

Custaloga, now wearing a fox fur on his shoulder, was speaking. His rich voice was slow enough that Duncan could understand many of his words. He was describing the Haudenosaunee nation, sometimes gesticulating to the doeskin pictograms on the walls.

The League of the Haudenosaunee was without rival. Every tribe from the great salt water to the Ohio country feared the Iroquois and also loved them, for they knew the Iroquois brought harmony. Because no tribe would dare bring war to defy the Grand Council, the peoples of all the woodlands lived in peace, at one with the spirits. Custaloga's speech was interrupted by long pauses in which he pointed at the old chronicles on the wall, as if to invoke their stories. Duncan saw now the bloodstains on some of the old skins, the charred edges of others. A sadness entered the sachem's voice.

This was in the past, Custaloga admitted. The seventeenth century had been the pinnacle of Iroquois empire. Then the French had armed the northern tribes, and the League had been battered in battle after battle. He pointed to a skin on which scores of humans lay sprawling on the ground while others were being led away in captive straps.

When Custaloga finally sat back in the circle, another chieftain rose to receive a long birch bark container from one of the female elders. He paced around the circle with the container before stopping before Atotarho and ceremoniously opening the container. The old sachem lifted out a long pipe and held it aloft, calling for the gods to open their hearts and come join the circle of elders.

The pipe was filled with tobacco, lit with a burning cedar stick, then slowly carried around the ring, each chieftain solemnly taking it to his lips. When the sachems were finished, the pipe was extended to Conawago, then to Duncan, who found his hand trembling as he accepted the ancient instrument. He felt like a small boy before ancient sages.

“Have you come to speak of the final fate of the Haudenosaunee?” The words were spoken by Atotarho the moment Duncan handed back the pipe, so abruptly and in such well-formed English that Duncan
stared at the Council leader in mute confusion before realizing they were directed toward Conawago and himself.

“I have come,” Conawago replied, “to discuss the fate of our gods.”

The words seemed to offend several of the sachems, who murmured words of alarm until a strong voice rang clear from the shadows. Sagatchie stepped forward, pointing out that no one had properly introduced the great Conawago, eldest of the Nipmuc tribe, who had once been the spiritual caretakers of all the forest people. He reminded them of how Conawago and Duncan had helped the Onondaga chief Skanawati restore honor to his people the year before, and how they both wore the mark of the dawnchasers.