The Beaded Moccasins (16 page)

"Good night, Turtle clan," I whisper. I crawl back to my pine needles, roll over, and go to sleep.

***

The next morning we awake to sunshine and singing birds. We hurry outside before breakfast to look at the damage.

The air is crisp and fresh and there is no wind.

The ditches are full of standing water, as still as mirrors.

About two dozen cornstalks are down. Three boys find another dozen or so at the mouth of the cave far
below us; the surging water carried them over the cliff wall. The boys drag the stalks up the cliff trail. Chickadee, Kolachuisen, and the other women and girls replant them in the damp ground.

The pumpkin and squash vines the boys find at the bottom of the cliff are a tangled and shredded mess, the pumpkins and squash all waterlogged and smashed. We have no choice but to bury them as fertilizer for the crops that remain.

Our Three Sisters vegetable rows did all right, considering. Chickadee and Hepte carefully tuck the exposed pumpkin, squash, and bean roots back into the soil. I can't dig. My hands are bandaged in soft strips of deerskin.

My job is to stamp the ground with my feet after the roots have been covered. I stamp and stamp all day. By the time we're finished, my hands throb in pain again.

I work almost as hard today as I did yesterday. Finally all the vegetables that will ever be salvaged have their roots back in the ground, with another month or so before the harvest. All we can do is hope and pray there'll be food for the winter.

We all swim in the river to wash away yesterday's mud. I hold my hands in the air as Hepte scrubs my scalp hard, then rinses and rinses my hair in the river's current.

Hepte soaks my hands again, then unwraps the deerskin strips. My hands look as though the flesh has peeled right off them, with nothing left but bright-red muscle. She rubs the same paste of comfrey and buckeye onto my hands and they turn peculiar again-first tight, then cold, and finally numb.

That evening, as I lie on my bed of pine needles, I marvel at how hard I've worked these last two days. I worked as hard as anyone. I didn't feel sorry for myself or complain about being tired, aching, thirsty, or hungry. I didn't worry about my future and when (or if) I'd be rescued. I was too busy saving our food supply to think about me.

I have scarcely thought about Mary Caroline Campbell, and all her troubles, since the night the rain started. It felt good, not worrying and fussing so much.

And yet now I know I have more strength, courage, and resolve than I would have ever dreamed possible. It's like finding a treasure I didn't know was mine. I know I can face anything.

I
T MUST BE LATE
S
EPTEMBER
. The afternoons have lost their steamy softness, and the mornings and evenings have a dry, cool snap to them. Slanting sunshine pulls our shadows away from us as we work in the gardens. Already I see mist swirl-dancing on the cooling river at sunrise. Hepte says it's the Green Corn Moon.

But I'd call it the Harvest Moon because we're harvesting our crops. For the first time since leaving the Allegheny, we have more than enough to eat. Hepte has been making corn soups mixed with acorn flour and sweetened with wild raspberries. We feast on samp fried in deer fat, which we eat with roasted squirrel and blueberries. We eat corn bread sweetened with honey for breakfast.

The pumpkins and squash are almost ready. These we'll dry in the sun, then save in the storehouse for the
long winter. Hepte will add them to winter stewpots of venison and cornmeal.

Maybe next year Mrs. Sequin will give me some apple seeds all the way from Montreal.

I look proudly at our rescued rows of corn, squash, beans, and pumpkins and marvel at how much work went into them. I spent every day this spring and summer working in our garden. We all did—the women, children, and old men-working day after day in the hot sunshine or cool rain. Even Chickadee learned how to swat flies, chase the crows away, and spot and pull weeds.

The vegetable rows extend past the wigwams, the storehouse, and the streambed in straight, orderly lines. The cornstalks glow in the clear autumn sunshine. The pumpkin and squash vines twist between the stalks, their darker-green leaves a pretty contrast to the bright-green corn.

The stalks will lose their color when the solid cold weather comes. Their crackling, butter-yellow husks will be made into cornhusk dolls for the little girls and laid out as soft mattresses for the old people.

The bare ears will be dried and used as kindling. The cornstalk roots will be dried and pounded into powder for winter soups. Children will chew on fresh stalks as a rare treat; the water inside the stalks is as sweet as sugar. No wonder our whole lives revolve around corn.

When my arms are full of ears, I stop to admire the vegetable mounds again. The bright-blue sky has billowy clouds piled high in the west-a storm is coming. The wind feels cool on my face.

Why do I love spending time in our garden? I've never thought of myself as a farmer. But each bright vegetable, each golden ear of corn, fills me with pride and a sense of quiet accomplishment.

My father Campbell would be proud of this garden.

I try to push the thought away, but it's too late. My eyes flood with tears. My chest hurts, my heart weighted down as with a stone.

The Campbells! They seem smaller somehow, diminished; that makes me feel even worse. Time and distance have changed them, too. The Campbells are just people, after all, trying to cull some wheat out of a world too filled with chaff.

I know why captives change over so completely, why I will, little by little, change more and more the longer I stay here. Our hearts yearn to belong. That's why we let go of the past, or at the very least loosen our grip on it.

In the first months of my captivity I often thought about what a torment I was as a daughter and a sister to the Campbells. Always complaining, always aggrieved, always so sure I was getting the worst part of the bargain at every turn. The way I was fills me with shame.

But I was raging at them, too, because I was not the only one in the wrong. Families get set in a pattern, just like a quilt-the Selfish One, the Lazy One, the Favorite, the Martyr, the Tyrant-repeating the same squabbles and misunderstandings again and again.

Life is too precious to waste in such vexing bitterness.

The shame is gone now, as is the rage. What's left is
overwhelming pain, dull eyed and stone cold. But if my grief means I love them, and forgive them, and miss them with all my soul, then surely the Campbells grieve for me too, in the same way and for the same reasons. Until we're all together again, that is my comfort.

My pride reminds me of a family of mice that lived in our Connecticut corncrib. During an especially bitter winter evening, I placed fabric remnants in a snug corner of the crib for their bedding. The next morning every scrap of cloth had been moved to another corner of their choosing.

Even mice want to re-create the world in their image. I know pride's a sin, but why would people be less prideful than mice?

We all want to make our mark on the world. We all want to leave grand evidence of our having been here. Whether it's westering, or growing a garden, or mound building, or not letting the starfires burn out, or even pretending to be an ambassador's wife, we all want to leave a legacy as big as the hills.

Next year we'll have more vegetable mounds, over there, I say to myself, in Unami this time. And over there in that sunny spot I'll plant my apple seeds. I can almost taste the apples crunching between my teeth.

A breeze catches in the cornstalks; the drying stalks rattle a warning of winter's cold. The clouds roll in from the west and block the sun. A cold wind sounds like winter-it roars through the gorge and whispers through the pines. I shiver and I think cozy thoughts about sitting in front of the fire and listening to stories.

Steam from the cookpots drifts past my nose. Every cooking pot we own is bubbling with something delicious-venison stews, corn chowders, berry soups. The wondrous smells make my stomach growl. But it's almost a snug, homey feeling to be so hungry, because I know there's plenty to eat.

Every stewpot is bubbling in my honor.

Tonight is my naming ceremony. From now on, only to myself will I be known as Mary Caroline Campbell.

I wonder what name Grandfather has chosen for me.

***

As the sun goes down, all two hundred Delaware are waiting for me by the storehouse. All two hundred are smiling at me. The woman who stole my lace collar is smiling. The two brothers who marched with me from the Susquehanna are smiling identical smiles. Even Smallpox Scars, the one who killed Sammy, is smiling and nodding.

Hepte, White Eyes, and Chickadee are next to Grandfather, who is standing in front of our biggest caldron. As I walk toward him, the crowd separates and gives way.

Grandfather hands me a huge turtle shell.

"Drink," he says.

I drink cool water with corn pollen floating on top.

"
Xkwe,
" he says. "Drink again."

While I drink, I run the word over in my mind.

"Schway, schway," I mutter to myself. "That means 'woman.'"

"
Wtaloksin?
he says. "Drink again."

I sip from the shell. "Wta lok sin," I say to myself. "'Help.' No, 'save.' No...'saved.'"

"
Haskwim,
" Grandfather says. "Drink again."

That's easy. "Corn," I think. Woman-Who-Saved-the-Corn.

That's me!

"'Woman-Who-Saved-the-Corn,' is that right?" I whisper to Grandfather in English. "Is that my new name?"

He puts his finger to his lips and gives me a wink.

We feast all night. I can't remember a time when I was so full, except perhaps a Christmas years ago. My full stomach fills me with sleepy contentment, like a warm blanket but on the inside.

For the first time since the deluge, my hands are completely free of bandages. My stubby, nailless fingers look like burned-down candles. They always hurt at the end of the day, especially if I've been working hard. My palms still look like raw meat, but they're healing. I hide my hands in my sleeves whenever I can.

"Nuxkwis," Grandfather says. He draws my hands out of my sleeves and holds them. "You saved an entire people with these hands. Why do you hide them?"

I rest my hands in my lap.

Drums and turtleshell rattles come out from wigwams, and musicians play and play far into the night. Dancers circle a huge, popping bonfire, their intricate steps lit up in the firelight.

All evening people bring me presents-new buckskin
tunics, beaded jewelry, a beautifully carved spoon of cherry wood. Kolachuisen gives me a corn-husk doll and sits beside me.

I think, Why not? I don't need it anymore. A promise springs from the heart and is savored in the mind. I will see the Campbells again.

"I have something for you," I tell her. I run to our wigwam and come back with the bluebird feather I found last spring.

"Oh!" she cries. "Thank you." Kolachuisen holds the feather in one hand and gives me a hug.

"I'll keep it always," she whispers.

"Tonn," Hepte cries in alarm, "you're not wearing your moccasins. For such a special occasion!"

"They no longer fit. My feet are too big."

Hepte's eyes fill with tears.

"But I want to keep them, always," I say quickly. "I want to remember the daughter who had them before me. Although our feet are no longer the same, perhaps one day our hearts will be."

"Perhaps," Hepte says. When she fills my bowl with another helping of berry soup, her eyes are shining.

"Gahes," I say softly, "thank you."

Except for Chickadee, Hepte, and Kolachuisen, everyone in
The Beaded Moccasins
was a real person. Even the Frenchman, Francois Sequin, had a trading post on the banks of the Cuyahoga River, close to where downtown Cleveland, Ohio, is now.

Mary Campbell, Mary Stewart, and her son Sammy were captured by the Delaware in the summer of 1759, at Penn's Creek, near the banks of the Susquehanna River in Snyder County, Pennsylvania. Sammy Stewart was killed soon after their capture. Mary and Mrs. Stewart were then taken to a Delaware village along the Allegheny River in Armstrong County, in western Pennsylvania.

Mary Campbell was adopted as the granddaughter of Netawatwees Sachem, and was well treated during her captivity.

That same summer the British sent the few Delaware who were still living in the eastern woodlands westward
into the Ohio wilderness. Mary Campbell and Mrs. Stewart went with them as their prisoners.

Mary Campbell really did live in a wide, shallow cave above the Cuyahoga River that first winter. That cave, now called the Mary Campbell Cave, is located in Gorge Park in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The following spring the Delaware built a village on flat land near the cave.

Why were Mary and Mrs. Stewart kidnapped in the first place? The tradition of captive taking goes back to prehistoric America. Tribes were eager to replace loved ones lost to warfare and illness. The replacements, if they were willing to be replacements, were treated just as lovingly as the originals.

According to Norman Heard (in
White Into Red: A Study of the Assimilation of White Persons Captured by the Indians),
the assimilation process took approximately five years, and rarely did a child successfully resist it. For girls under twelve years old and boys under fourteen-that is, before puberty-the assimilation process was much faster than for adults.

The rest of the story-Mary's long march, what it felt like to be so far from home, spending a long, cold Ohio winter in a cave, what happened to Mrs. Stewart, what it was like living with people so different from herself-is fiction.

In real life Mary did see the Campbells again.

In 1764 the British ordered all white captives on the western frontier to return to Fort Pitt. In November of that year a Swiss mercenary named Lt. Col. Henry Bouquet collected captives on the Tuscawaras River and escorted them to the fort. One historian said that on the Tuscawaras, Netawatwees "wept as he handed Mary to the commanding officer."