The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
I look back down to Bird on the shore. The girl sits close beside him now, and he cradles her wounded hand in his, rubs something into it that he’s taken from his hide bag. “They have their potions for every ill,” I tell the two Jesuits. “It’s witchcraft. I’ve even witnessed a sorcerer pretend to suck a sickness from an old man’s belly. The sorcerer leaned to the man and made loud slurping noises, then spat what appeared to be tobacco juice onto the dirt beside him.” Both Isaac and Gabriel listen with wide eyes. “Those watching went into a small frenzy, acted madly enough that the old man was forced to sit up on his own, smiling like an idiot. None of them were wise enough to recognize that this was simply trickery on the part of the sorcerer, who’d obviously hidden tobacco in his mouth before arriving. You’ll be confronted by this type of foolery on a daily basis.”
Bird must have said something funny to the girl, for she smiles brightly, looking up at him. She allows her hand to stay in his. A pang of jealousy roots about in my gut.
QUICKENING CURRENT
The Crow certainly doesn’t seem happy. And neither am I. He’d apparently hoped to stay with his kind in that fortress of nightmares they’ve created on the cliffs above the wide river. But their great chief Champlain had other ideas for him, and told me himself they needed the Crow to help their new ones understand us. I watch him in the canoe ahead, listless in his paddling. Somehow, my love, my great plan has fallen to pieces. Not so long ago I thought I’d figured it all out. The Crow would be dead or a captive of the Haudenosaunee, who would have the girl back with them. Instead, I still have both, and six more of these creatures to drag back home. Fox calls the new ones charcoal. “They are as heavy and as dumb,” he says as we watch two of them ahead of us in their hosts’ canoe lamely attempt to paddle. With their fresh robes, so black they absorb the late-summer sunshine, I think Fox’s name for them is very good. But I will still call them all crows for the way they hop around and peck at dead or dying things.
“If we were to burn them,” I ask, “do you think they would give the same heat as charcoal?”
Fox laughs. “We could soon find out,” he says, digging deep and pulling ahead of me in his fast new canoe.
Four days travelling with the river’s current from that place of the hairy ones and we are in a good but wary mood. Autumn already presents itself in the mornings that make me shiver to get out of my blanket, the first wisps of winter’s beard not so far away. We set our nets each evening for fish and keep a close eye out for deer and moose. The approaching moon of turning leaves will tell us much about what to expect this winter. And we are not so far from Haudenosaunee land now. None of us sleep well in the short time allotted, listening, even in our dreams, for the hide-covered feet of our enemy.
Fox knows something feels amiss these last couple of days. His canoe stays close to mine, and our most observant scouts lead us. As soon as this great river of the Ottawa People splits, we will have to make an important decision. To return home on the Snake where we slaughtered their envoys would be the quickest and the most obvious route. But the Haudenosaunee, badly stung by us, have by now been given enough time to raise a response. Every bend in the river I wait for their arrows to sing near my head. My new gift from the hairy ones rests on a hide pack in front of me. I can make it roar now, and if given a handful of breaths to stuff another piece of lead down its throat, make it roar again. I know, my love, that once more I will be tested.
MY BLOOD
My blood. I can feel it. I drag my hand in the water, the hand Bird has begun to mend with his roots. I didn’t need that finger. I know it now. For each day that we paddle, for each time that we portage another rapid, I can feel my blood, my family closer to me.
—
THE LAST OF THE SUMMER loons call when it’s time for exhausted travellers to sleep. I’m not sleeping anymore because I know that my father’s brothers are close.
—
I’VE BEGUN TO LIKE Bird much as I would one of them, maybe even you, my father. Is that wrong? I must, then, remember what he did to you all, Father, Mother, Sister, dear Brother. I know we paddle through the place where they found us last winter. This is the place where they took you away from me. And they dare return to it so soon? It makes me turn away in disgust, and to hate the man I’d started to trust.
—
TONIGHT WE CAMP without a fire. The men eat their ottet quickly, but none seem able to sleep. They can sense as surely as I can that my blood is close. I close my eyes. I’m the only one who does sleep soundly tonight beside the sighing river. I dream of my family around me, am held in the arms of my mother, tickled by my brother, caressed by my sister, fed by my father. He smiles down at me and places a warm piece of deer meat in my mouth. The blood of the meat is strong. It is fresh. Tomorrow, he whispers as he fades like morning fog on the river. Tomorrow. I open my eyes to the first light of the day, remove the stump of my wounded finger, and wipe the blood from my mouth.
THE HORROR OF IT
I don’t quite believe what begins to unfold. From both shores of this wide river that the Huron call the Snake, Iroquois, dozens and dozens of them, pour into canoes hidden carefully in the tall grasses. Some are already in the water and closing in on a few of our stragglers. I watch as their archers in front pull back on their bows and release, the arrows cutting through the air and striking some of the closer Huron paddlers. Within moments, the Iroquois surround the canoes slowed by the wounded and begin hacking at them with hatchets. Screams echo across the water.
That is when I see the canoe of four young donnés, their blond hair flashing in the sunlight. Their canoe has been hit by Iroquois arrows and is sinking. Most of the sauvage paddlers are dead or flailing, and the donnés desperately try to paddle away from the approaching demons. I shout to them to push harder, and hearing my voice, they look up. One holds out his paddle as if I can somehow reach him and pull him to safety just as an Iroquois canoe draws alongside and a warrior grabs him by the hair and drags him aboard screaming as the others hack and smash those still alive until the canoe finally sinks, the dead men floating away downstream.
I feel a blow on my shoulder and fear I’ve been struck by an arrow. Turning, I see it’s David hitting me with his paddle and growling at me to help them go faster or we’ll all die. Glancing to the nearest shore, I see more and more Iroquois canoes emerging from the tall grass. There must be hundreds of men. They will kill us all.
Bending at the waist with the stroke as I’ve witnessed my sauvages do, I grunt with each effort, try to keep the quick rhythm and realize I’m holding my breath. Is this the day, Lord? I know as I take a deep breath that I don’t want to die today. The sun above us is warm and cool river water splashes in my face, kicked up by the man desperately paddling in front of me. A volley of arrows hisses into the water all around us, and David moans behind me. I look and see an arrow sticking from his shoulder. He shouts at me to paddle for my life.
Bird and the girl’s canoe is only a stone’s throw away from us off to the left. Bird shouts at Fox in his own canoe. Fox shouts back. He tells Bird that it’s time. Bird places his paddle down, reaches in front of him, and picks up his musket. He leans with it over the gunwale of his canoe. The other men continue to paddle hard. As if this is something he’s done all his life, Bird stares down the barrel and fires the weapon. A cloud of smoke envelops his head and the canoe rocks with such ferocity that I fear it will tip over. I immediately look in the direction he’s fired and see a panicked group of Iroquois stop paddling, the side of their canoe ripped open and several of them screaming in pain. Bird busies himself reloading.
I know the Iroquois have caught up to the canoes behind us when the sounds of mortal conflict cross the water. But half of our canoes are still ahead, and Bird has reloaded and takes aim again. He doesn’t fire, though. Our pursuers have slowed and, like a swarm of bees, attack those in our group who weren’t speedy enough. The poor men will face a brutal death tonight. Looking away, the rest of us conti
To my horror, a flotilla of Iroquois canoes breaks from their carnage and begins pursuit of us again.
TWO
Success is measured in different ways. The success of the hunt. The success of the harvest. For some, the success of harvesting souls. We watched all of this, fascinated and frightened. Yes, we saw all that happened and, yes, we sometimes smiled, but more often we filled with fret. The world must change, though. This is no secret. Things cannot stay the same for long. With each baby girl born into her longhouse and her clan, with each old man’s death feast and burial in the ossuary, new worlds are built as old ones fall apart. And sometimes, this change we speak of happens right under our noses, in tiny increments, without our noticing. By then, though, oh, by then it’s simply too late.
Yes, the crows continued to caw as crows are prone to do, and after a while we got used to their voices even when they berated us for how we chose to live. Some of us allowed them their cackling because we found it entertaining, others because we believed our only choice was to learn how to caw ourselves. And still others kept them close for the worldly treasure their masters promised.
It’s unfair, though, to blame only the crows, yes? It’s our obligation to accept our responsibility in the whole affair. And so we watched as the adventure unfolded, and we prayed to Aataentsic, Sky Woman, who sits by the fire right beside us, to intervene if what we believed was coming indeed coalesced. But Aataentsic only need remind us that humans, in all their many forms, are an unruly bunch, prone to fits of great generosity and even greater meting out of pain.
THEY COME
They come to me. I have learned their voice, Lord. And they begin to listen.
A dozen of them sit or sprawl in the longhouse as I hold up a Host to the light pouring in from the chimney hole above. Brooding Gabriel stands beside me with a dented tin chalice in his hands. Sweet Isaac has been forced to a lesser role because of his missing fingers. He has difficulty holding much of anything, must pinch the Communion wafers he offers to the gaping mouths of the converted between the nub of his left thumb and the fingerless palm of his right hand.
Most of those in front of me are old enough to be near death. The few younger ones show the affliction that has decimated the village in recent years, their faces pocked with it or, if they still fight it, their skin dotted with welts of oozing pus. I sometimes awake in the early morning, dear Lord, jolted by the fear that we’ve brought this upon them, but You calm me back to sleep by reminding me that they need persuasion, just as Egypt’s Pharaoh had.
With the language of the Huron that I’ve learned over the years, I speak for You.
“The Great Voice is one body,” I declare as the poor things watch me from their mangy beaver blankets. “And He is three bodies together.” I wrap two fingers of one hand around one finger of the other. “But He is not simply three gathered together.” I look down at them as I pull my fingers apart, seeing the confusion in their eyes, the ache for understanding. I make a fist with one hand. “He is what you call an oki, what we call a spirit.” I say the word slowly so that those who choose to try to imitate it may do so. “He is the most true of okis, of spirits. The most powerful by far. He is the only being that can be at once the father, and the child, and the very true spirit. He is three, but he is one.”
An old woman, one who questions me incessantly, lifts her bony finger. I’ve named her Delilah since she loves to tempt me into debate. “I have seen many of the oki in my life.” She pauses as if deciding whether she will say more or not. “When I was young a powerful oki entered me. It hurt. It took my virginity.” Delilah smiles. “It hurt, but it felt good, too.” A couple of the others laugh.
I try to ignore her. She reminds me of that one, Gosling. These old Huron women are so often jugglers and tricksters.
“How old is your Jesus oki?” a serious young man asks, his face and chest ravaged by disease. This one I’ve named Aaron, for Moses’ older brother, the one so persuasive with his arguments. Aaron is close to being swayed, but like a bird that I try to tame, the slightest jerky motion on my part sends him flitting away.
I think about how best to answer. “This cannot be known. What can be known is all of the many things He has made. Remember that when He existed, the sky, the earth, all kinds of things did not yet exist.”
“And he made those things?” Aaron asks.
I nod.
“What tools, then, did he use to make all these things?” he asks. “And where did he get these tools? If he is the first oki, he couldn’t trade some other oki for them, could he.”
I see the trap being set. “He had nothing to make things with,” I answer. “He just spoke, and then something happened. This is how powerful He is.”
The Huron in front of me turn to one another and begin debating amongst themselves. I must hold their attention a little longer. Lifting my arms, I raise my voice. “The Great Voice made all kinds of things, too many to be counted. He made the things we see when we move our eyes side to side. But many other things He made we do not see.”
They stop their talking and look up to where Gabriel stands beside me, his arms crossed. Isaac, weak since the Iroquois returned his damaged body back to us, can’t stand for long periods and sits on the floor at my feet. “Some of the things He made, like stone and sand and metal, do not live,” I say. “But trees and animals and humans and spirits do live.”
I must decide which course to take. I want them to understand and accept, but I can’t go on too long or they’ll begin debating again and then I’ve lost them. “Listen carefully,” I say. “There are three lineages among those who live. The trees and the grasses and the bushes are one lineage. The fish and the animals are another family. And humans and spirits are the other kind of life.”
Serious young Aaron speaks up once more. “Are you saying that stones and water and trees and animals have no oki? Only humans possess this spi-rit?” He says the last word haltingly, almost comically.
I nod.
“But we,” Aaron says, sweeping his arm to those around him, “all of us, all of our lives, have been taught that everything has its own spirit. Everything contains the ability to live.”
I keep my gaze upon the young man until he looks down. “Do you see a tree fleeing when you approach it with an axe to cut it down?” I ask. “Do you hear a deer beg for mercy before you shoot it with your arrow?”
An old man I’ve not yet named speaks up. “When I kill an animal, I thank its oki for allowing me to eat, to live.” The others nod. “When I use a rock for a fire circle, I thank its oki for the heat it will give.”
I lift my hand for silence. “I agree that there are dark powers in our world,” I say. “And these dark powers are masterful at presenting themselves as something they’re not. An animal or a tree or a rock cannot possess an oki—”
“How do you know?” Delilah asks.
“Because a tree or a deer or a stone cannot pass from this life to the other. To the world after death that exists high above us.”
She shakes her head. “Again,” she asks, “how do you know?”
“Because the Great Voice, the most powerful voice, says so,” I answer. “His voice is in this.” I nod to Isaac, who struggles to pick up my Bible with the stumps of his hands. I hold it up in front of me, my brain humming as it once did when I played chess so many years ago, plotting a number of moves ahead. I open the tattered book, and when I find the passage, begin to read from Genesis in my own tongue. “‘And He said,’” I speak loudly, “‘Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.’” I hand the Bible back to Isaac.
“What did you say?” Aaron asks.
“This wampum that I run my eyes across,” I say, nodding at the Bible, “is the one true wampum, so you must lis
“Tell us what you said,” Delilah demands, reaching her arm up to me.
“Yes,” the old man echoes, “you must tell us.”
“But I don’t think you are ready to hear what this wampum says,” I tell them again.
“Baah,” Delilah says, some of the others laughing quietly at how agitated she and the old man are. “Stop treating us like children. If you wish for us to wander away, that’s the surest way to do so.” She makes as if she is going to get up and leave, struggling to stand so that Aaron must rise to help her.
“I do not wish to treat you like children,” I answer, raising my hand to her, palm out. “But the Great Voice says that you must give up praying to your okis, for they are false. They will lead only to harm. I cannot share my wampum until you are able to promise me that you will listen only to the Great Voice.” I’m rarely so direct with them, so demanding. In the past it has proven useless, pushing them away rather than bringing them closer. But I admit, dear Lord, that even I sometimes grow frustrated.
The congregation begins to stir, growing more restless, and I again realize that I’m losing them, but I’ve been talking for hours and we all need a break. From experience, I know they won’t go anywhere until I hand out their meal. But my practice of keeping them with me in the longhouse all of Sunday won’t last much longer, either. This spring is the first in three years with enough rain for the crops to begin taking root. The summer, it appears, will be the first plentiful one in the several years that Gabriel and Isaac have been here. With the good harvest, I fear my flock will scatter back to their clans.