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BOOK ONE
Melba Blue Jay
They called themselves Wampanoags, and they were a hospitable lot, even helping Evans, Cox, Turner, and Hines out of their armor. De-mailed, the fearsome foursome looked more like plucked chickens, and smelled a good deal worse. Intestinally speaking, they had had a rough time of it back on the beach, the inside of the armor attested to that. The Wampanoags gave them herbal lards and ushered them straight to the dunging grounds.
This revered area, a tranquil ravine cleared of all poison ivy several hundred yards downwind of camp, shaded by elm, sycamore and maple trees, was rich in rose-leaves, assorted vines, sage, elder, skunk cabbage, and wild spinach. T'would be no rump here mauled by paper. The cool brook bubbled by, narrow enough to straddle without getting wet one's moccasins or leg-plates. A Wampanoag showed how, abandoning his load to that natural flush and cleaning himself with handfuls of cool water and lards.
Following powwow and the feast, the Wampanoag chanted about the one great subject of summer, that is to say winter. As summer waned, Manitou wounded the Great Bear who set out to die in the South, sweeping a wave of smaller animals before him and trailing a thousand-mile swath of blood across the Great Woods. The White Winds followed and heckled the Great Bear to the banks of the Great River separating the living and the dead. There, on the shore of death, Great Bear gave up the spirit. The White Winds ceased, the sun returned, a tree sprung from the bear's carcass and sowed its seeds far and wide.
"We, too, must go south." Cabot drew an arrow in the dirt. "South."
South? His hosts grew silent and reflective. Danger lay to the south. The Narragansett did not like strangers. The Pequot were worse. But the Lenni-Lenape, known as the Grandfathers by the Eastern Woodland tribes which had sprung from them, were worst of all. "Lenni-Lenape! Lenni-Lenape!" Old Chief Catomicet split the underbelly of an enormous cod. Its cold eyes stared at Cabot long after its innards lay in a wicker basket.
The navigator remained undaunted. "I would find yellow stones." To make himself understood, he drew Cox's misericord and pointed out its gold hilt.
The subject puzzled Chief Catomicet. Red stones and green stones, stones that moved and stones which could talk, these were familiar stones, but not yellow stones. Moreover, it surprised him that the white men had crossed the Great Water to find something they already possessed where they came from. The hunter of deer in deer-country finds deer. The hunter of deer in bear-country finds only disappointment.
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