“How long this downpour lasted I know not, but it stopped as suddenly as it began, and a few large hailstones fell, so large that we could hear them rattle on the bark roofs of the village. Then came a deeper roar out of the southwest, louder and louder, nearer and nearer. Suddenly a great thing rushed past us in a cloud of flying leaves and broken branches, and struck the village with a crash, full in the middle, and in a moment was gone. As it passed on we saw it; it looked like a great, twisting strand of long hair hanging from the clouds and dragging along the earth, sweeping before it the trees and the wigwams.
“The instant it passed, we saw that the log stockade was down and most of the houses of the village, but just then came another blinding flood of rain which held us back, and when we finally reached our goal we found a number of the Susquehannocks lying dead amid the ruins of their houses; and of those who were left alive and able to run, all were in flight somewhere in that rain-swept forest.
“As to the wounded, we dispatched those too badly hurt to take with us, and seized the rest as captives, and then, with all the weapons, pipes, beautiful clothing and ornaments we could carry, we made our way homeward. Thus the Thunder, my Guardian Spirit, helped me, and helped me to raise my name to what it is to-day.
“What finally became of the captives, do you ask? A few we killed by torture, in revenge for what their people had done to us; some died; some we let go free after a year or two; others finally intermarried with our people and cast their lot with us. You know Traveling-everywhere’s wife? She was one of those captives, given as a servant to his parents. She was but a young girl, and Traveling-everywhere, himself but little older, took pleasure in teaching her to speak our Lenape language. They got to liking each other so well that they finally built a wigwam of their own. Now you could hardly tell her from one of us.”
I found it much easier to assimilate these beliefs and stories than to learn the every-day, practical side of Lenape life, at which I proved a tragic failure. Although I studied the methods of experienced hunters I never could master the knack of effective shooting with the bow and arrow. And I tried my best. Seldom could I bring down a deer. The neighbors grew tired of providing meat for me and my family.
Whispering-leaves did her part to perfection; everything she made or produced was of the very best, which made me feel my shortcomings all the more. And she would not let me touch the garden—the only thing I knew anything about. “Garden work is not manly,” she would say. “I will not endure hearing the neighbors talk about my mate doing woman’s work. How would you feel if you saw me going out of the village with a long bow on my shoulder? Or burning out a log for a canoe? Would you not feel shame to see your mate do an unwomanly thing? In our life, the man and woman must do each his or her part and neither is harder than the other. Surely to hunt all day and every day, good weather and bad, is fully as hard as wielding the hoe! How would you like to hear the neighbors say, ‘Whispering-leaves ought to give Flying-wolf the skirt, and she put on his long leggings and breechclout?’”
I was even a failure at finishing her wooden bowl, although I had watched a number of men making such things and thought I had learned their method. I heaped hot coals on that maple burl, blew them until they burned deep, and scraped out the charcoal with shells and bits of flint again and again, until I thought I had it hollowed deep enough. Then I ground it patiently with bits of gritty sandstone. When I had finished, I thought I had accomplished a very good piece of work for a beginner. But Whispering-leaves, although she smiled and said sweet words when I laid it finished before her, and pretended to think it perfect, tucked it away after a few days, and when we had visitors and a big bowl was needed, she borrowed another bowl from the neighbors.
What hurt me worst was seeing her treasured finery disappear bit by bit, doubtless traded for meat and for skins to make our moccasins and every-day garments. First it was the seed beads, then those of bone, then one string of shell beads after another until only the copper beads were left. Finally they too were missing when I came home one night. One day I had occasion to search beneath the sleeping benches for something and had to pull out the square basket in which she kept her treasures, her prettiest embroidered, festival attire. The basket felt so light that I looked into it—and found it empty.
Often the boy came in crying and said that his little companions would not let him play with them because, they said, his father was “no good.”
And one night Rumbling-wings told me that he had seen the spirit of Flying-wolf in a dream the night before, and that he said he was living in a strange land and wanted to come back to his home.