His hair was dark brown rather than black, which I thought was unusual for a Tuscarora, though you do see Leni Lenapes and a few Shawanos with lighter hair. It was pretty thin above his forehead, and the scalp beneath showed through, a nasty bright pink. I looked at that and at the red peeling skin of his face, and thought: well done, Bigkiller, you’ve brought home a sick man. Some lowland skin disease, and what a job it’s going to be purifying everything after he dies….
That was when he turned and looked at me with those blue eyes. Yes, blue. I don’t blame you; I didn’t believe that story either, until I saw for myself. The white men have eyes the color of a sunny sky. I tell you, it is a weird thing to see when you’re not ready for it.
Bigkiller came through the crowd, looking at me and laughing. “Look what we caught, Uncle,” he said, and pointed with his spear. “A white man!”
“I knew that,” I said, a little crossly. I hated it when he called me “Uncle.” I hated it when anyone did it, except children—I was not yet that old—but I hated it worse when it came from Bigkiller. Even if he was my nephew.
“He was with the Tuscaroras,” one of the warriors, Muskrat by name, told me. “These two women had him carrying firewood—”
“Never mind that.” Bigkiller gave Muskrat a bad look. No need to tell the whole town that this brave raid deep into Tuscarora country had amounted to nothing more than the ambush and kidnapping of a small wood-gathering party.
To me Bigkiller said, “Well, Uncle, you’re the one who knows all tongues. Can you talk with this white-skin?”
I stepped closer and studied the stranger, who looked back at me with those impossible eyes. He seemed unafraid, but who could read expressions on such an unnatural face?
“Who are you and where do you come from?” I asked in Tuscarora.
He smiled and shook his head, not speaking. The woman beside him, the older one, spoke up suddenly. “He doesn’t know our language,” she said. “Only a few words, and then you have to talk slow and loud, and kick him a little.”
“Nobody in our town could talk with him,” the younger woman added. “Our chief speaks a little of your language, and one family has a Catawba slave, and he couldn’t understand them either.”
By now the crowd was getting noisy, everyone pushing and jostling, trying to get a look at the white man. Everyone was talking, too, saying the silliest things. Old Otter, the elder medicine man, wanted to cut the white man to see what color his blood was. An old woman asked Muskrat to strip him naked and find out if he was white all over, though I guessed she was really more interested in learning what his male parts looked like.
The young Tuscarora woman said, “Are they going to kill him?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Maybe.”
“They shouldn’t,” she said. “He’s a good slave. He’s a hard worker, and he can really sing and dance.”
I translated this, and to my surprise Muskrat said, “It is true that he is stronger than he looks. He put up a good fight, with no weapon but a stick of firewood. Why do you think I’m holding this club left-handed?” He held up his right arm, which was swollen and dark below the elbow. “He almost broke my arm.”
“He did show spirit,” Bigkiller agreed. “He could have run away, but he stayed and fought to protect the women. That was well done for a slave.”
I looked at the white man again. He didn’t look all that impressive, being no more than medium size and pretty thin, but I could see there were real muscles under that strange skin.
“He can do tricks, too,” the young Tuscarora woman added. “He walks on his hands, and—”
The older woman grunted loudly. “He’s bad luck, that’s what he is. We’ve had nothing but trouble since he came. Look at us now.”
I passed all this along to Bigkiller. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was going to kill him, but maybe I should keep him as a slave. After all, what other chief among the People has a white slave?”
A woman’s voice said, “What’s going on here?”
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t have to. There was no one in our town who would not have known that voice. Suddenly everyone got very quiet.
My sister Tsigeyu came through the crowd, everyone moving quickly out of her way, and stopped in front of the white man. She looked him up and down and he looked back at her, still smiling, as if pleased to meet her. That showed real courage. Naturally he had no way of knowing that she was the Clan Mother of the Wolf Clan—which, if you don’t know, means she was by far the most powerful person in our town—but just the sight of her would have made most people uneasy. Tsigeyu was a big woman, not fat but big like a big man, with a face like a limestone cliff. And eyes that went right through you and made your bones go cold. She died a couple of years ago, but at the time I am telling about she was still in the prime of life, and such gray hairs as she had she wore like eagle feathers.
She said, “For me? Why, thank you, Bigkiller.”
Bigkiller opened his mouth and shut it. Tsigeyu was the only living creature he feared. He had more reason than most, since she was his mother.
Muskrat muttered something about having the right to kill the prisoner for having injured him.
Tsigeyu looked at Muskrat. Muskrat got a few fingers shorter, or that was how it looked. But after a moment she said, “It is true you are the nearest thing to a wounded warrior among this brave little war party.” She gestured at the young Tuscarora woman. “So I think you should get to keep this girl, here.”
Muskrat looked a good deal happier.
“The rest of you can decide among yourselves who gets the other woman, and the boy.” Tsigeyu turned to me. “My brother, I want you to take charge of this white man for now. Try to teach him to speak properly. You can do it if anyone can.”
That I an Englishman and Subjeckt of Her Maiestie Queene Elizabeth, did by Misadventure come to this country of Virginnia in the Yeere of Our Lord 1591: and after greate Hardshipp ar-riued amongst these Indians. Who haue done me no Harme, but rather shewed me most exelent Kindnesse, sans the which I were like to haue dyed in this Wildernesse. Wherefore, good Frend, I coniure you, that you offer these poore Sauages no Offence, nor do them Iniurie: but rather vse them generously and iustly, as they haue me.
Look at this. Did you ever see the like? He made these marks himself on this deerskin, using a sharpened turkey feather and some black paint that he cooked up from burned wood and oak galls. And he told me to keep it safe, and that if other white men came this way I should show it to them, and it would tell them his story.
Yes, I suppose it must be like a wampum belt, in a way. Or those little pictures and secret marks that the wise elders of the Leni Lenapes use to record their tribe’s history. So clearly he was some sort of didahnuwisgi, a medicine man, even though he did not look old enough to have received such an important teaching.
He was always making these little marks, scratching away on whatever he could get—skins, mostly, or mulberry bark. People thought he was crazy, and I let them, because if they had known the truth not even Tsigeyu could have saved him from being killed for a witch.
But all that came later, during the winter, after he had begun to learn our language and I his. On that first day I was only interested in getting him away from that crowd before there was more trouble. I could see that Otter was working himself up to make one of his speeches, and if nothing else that meant there was a danger of being talked to death.
Inside my house I gave the stranger a gourd of water. When he had eased his thirst I pointed to myself. “Mouse,” I said, very slowly and carefully. “Tsis-de-tsi.”