1636: Seas of Fortune (56 page)

“What’s the problem?” Benzo gritted out.

“The problem, oh master of warfare, is that you can’t make leather without skins to tan. If we kill the
wagyu
we have left, our breeding pairs, we won’t have any next year.”

“What about deer? There surely are deer in the woods.”

“Indeed there are, and we have deer skins drying even as we speak. Unfortunately, the deer have proven to be quite reluctant to donate their skins to the glory of New Nippon. It takes much time to hunt them down.

“Worse, these woods are rife with great bears, who are equally interested in the deer, and not inclined to share.”

“So kill the bears!”

“It takes many arrows. A bear pierced by just one or two is an Annoyed Bear, not a Dead Bear, and an Annoyed Bear is worse than a shortage of deer.”

The assistant headman coughed. “An Annoyed Governor might be worse, in the long run, than an Annoyed Bear.”

“Ah, very true,” said Danzaemon. “So, to avoid annoyance on both counts, give us guns and powder, and we will get rid of the bears. And then the deer, and deerskins, will multiply.”

Kodachi Machi (Santa Cruz)

Shigetsuna looked up from the scroll he was reading. “Guns?”

“Guns.” Inawashiro Yoshimichi, the
daikun
responsible for relations with the eta, grimaced. “I’d prefer to just send a party of samurai to clean out these bears, and then move on. Nothing good can come of giving guns to eta. And the samurai on garrison duty here would normally enjoy a bit of action.”

He spat. “But the samurai would have to spend weeks in the vicinity of the
eta-mura
. The pollution would weigh heavily upon them.”

Shigetsuna shrugged. “‘Fifty steps, one hundred steps.’ I suppose giving the eta a few guns would be the least evil choice. Of course, they will be too defiled by the usage for a samurai to ever hold them again. Have the triggers painted white, as a warning.” White was the color of death and the supernatural.

Morro Bay,

Late Spring 1636

“Have you ever see a gun so old?” The eta huntsman held up the arquebus.

“Perhaps it belonged to Oda Nobunaga’s father.” Oda Nobunaga was the first of the Great Unifiers of Japan; his father died in 1551. The Portuguse had introduced firearms to Japan in 1542.

“It’s a very pretty club.”

“Enough joking around. Let’s see if it can still shoot.”

It did. Surprisingly well, in fact.

* * *

Gorosaku pointed at the trunk of a nearby cypress tree. There was bear hair on it, white-tipped. A grizzly had given itself a back scratch here.

Hikobei nodded, then crouched. A moment later, he found a bear print at the base of the tree. It was still fresh, perhaps hours old. He looked up at Gorosaku. “Let’s get the others.”

* * *

The local Chumash Indians ate acorns, roots, berries, elk, deer and fish. So did the grizzlies. If Indian women went out to gather acorns, they would set pickets, just as rabbits might have one of their number scanning the sky for hawks. If the men went fishing, they would avoid the spots that the bears favored.

It was rare for the Chumash to hunt grizzlies. They were brave, not suicidal.

But occasionally, the grizzlies hunted them.

* * *

“I am a deer,” White Cloud reminded himself. He wore a deer head mask, and was crouched down. He used his left hand to drag himself forward, his right carried his bow and a few arrows.

The herd noticed him, and recoiled. From a safer distance, they stopped to watch him.

White Cloud had also stopped, and watched them. “I am a deer, I am one of you.”

After a time, he resumed his movement toward the herd.

They reacted again, but this time they didn’t flee quite as far, they weren’t so sure he was a threat. “I look like a deer, sound like a deer, smell like a deer.”

At last, they let him move among them, their thoughts focused on finding the tenderest shoots.

* * *

Another hunter was present, watching the herd, picking out the weakest member. White Cloud. “He looks like a deer, sounds like a deer, smells like a deer. I think he would taste like a deer,” the grizzly perhaps thought to himself. Or perhaps the grizzly, who was well past his prime, thought that White Cloud would be easier to catch.

* * *

The wind shifted, and the herd caught the scent of grizzly. It stampeded, leaving White Cloud in its dust. A moment later and he smelled the grizzly, too, and joined them in flight.

But a grizzly can run twenty-five miles an hour for two miles without faltering.

* * *

“What the hell is that?” said Gorosaku, hearing the sound of breaking branches.

The first deer ran past them before the Japanese could react. They put an arrow into the second, however.

They gawked at White Cloud as he ran toward them. An Indian wearing a deer’s head was quite outside their experience.

Then they heard the roar of the pursuing grizzly.

Three bowmen fired, all at once, as if the arrows were released from the giant bow of some celestial warrior. The grizzly snarled, but kept coming.

Gorosaku fired his arquebus. The range was less than optimal, but the ball struck the bear in the shoulder, and checked the bear momentarily. The bowmen fired again. Gorosaku fell back to reload; the rate of fire on a muzzle loader was nothing to brag about.

Hikobei waited. The grizzly stopped for a moment, pawing in irritation at the shafts of the arrows still stuck in it, trying to dislodge them.

A third round of arrows flew through the air. One was an Indian arrow; White Cloud had turned to help his unexpected allies. Both the Japanese and Indian arrows just annoyed the beast, but its reaction bought time for the gunmen.

Hikobei still waited. The grizzly came forward, but more slowly. Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten.

And then Hikobei fired, his shot striking the grizzly in the forehead, a bit below between the eyes. It dropped.

Gorosaku put another ball into it, for good luck.

* * *

White Cloud walked slowly toward Hikobei, hands raised. The Japanese hunters allowed this, but they kept their hands near their knife hilts, just in case.

White Cloud stood within hand’s reach of Hikobei; the Indian was a head taller. “Greetings, ‘Little Giant.’ Thank you for saving me from the bear.”

This was mostly lost on Hikobei at the time, he didn’t know the language of what scholars would call the Obispeno Chumash. But he could guess that White Cloud was happy not to be in a grizzly’s tummy, and Hikobei bowed.

White Cloud presented him with a little deer bone whistle.

Hikobei studied it, then gave it a tentative blow. White Cloud smiled again.

In the meantime, several of the Japanese had rigged up a branch so that they could carry the bear carcass back to the
eta-mura
.

“Let’s get this food back to the village,” said Gorasaku. “Those deer are thoroughly spooked, there’s no point in hunting them right now.”

Hikobei nodded, and motioned for White Cloud to follow them. Hesitantly, he did so.

* * *

The Japanese eta village stood on Estero Bluffs. Indians had once lived there; the Japanese had found their grinding holes. The Japanese had known that there was still an Indian village on the far side of Morro Bay, but had carefully avoided it. And as far as they knew, the Indians had avoided them, too.

One of First-to-Dance’s tribesmen, Talks-While-Walking, had been assigned to the eta to serve as their translator in dealings with other Indians. All of the Japanese settlements now had such translators, personally selected by First-to-Dance. The gifts given to these translators, while modest by Japanese standards, were of great value to the Indians. This, of course, created obligations on their part to First-to-Dance, their patroness.

This was Talks-While-Walking’s first opportunity to translate since they left the Monterey Bay area, and he addressed White Cloud with great formality.

Unfortunately, White Cloud had no idea what Talks-While-Walking was saying. And vice versa. The Ohlone language was of the Penutian language family, while Northern Chumash was Hokan. However, White Cloud could tell, from the other Indian’s body language, that he was receiving a polite greeting. That was good enough. It was hard for him to give Talks-While-Walking his full attention, anyway, when the exotic Japanese were around.

White Cloud was given a tour of the village, the Japanese goods were even stranger than the Japanese themselves. Finally, he worked up the courage to ask, by gesture, whether he could touch Hikobei’s arquebus. Hikobei held it out, two handed, for White Cloud to inspect. White Cloud reached out a finger, and held it just above the barrel, as if it were a cooking pot and he wanted to make sure it wasn’t too hot to touch. At last, he touched it, and ran his finger lightly down to the muzzle. “Boom!” he said.

That didn’t require translation.

Neither did White Cloud’s smile.

* * *

On the beach near the Japanese village, White Cloud pointed first to himself, and then across Morro Bay.

“He says that he is from the other side,” Talks-While-Walking explained.

White Cloud pointed at Hikobei and Gorasaku, then, with three fingers, toward the Sun.

“In three days, come visit him at his village.”

* * *

There was, of course, much discussion of the matter. Should Hikobei and Gorasaku go? Should they be accompanied by others, besides of course Talks-While-Walking? Should they go by land or by sea? And most important, should they bring firearms?

The firearms, of course, might create awe, causing the locals to treat the Japanese with great respect, even subservience. Or they might excite the Indians’ greed, enough so the Indians would be willing to steal, even kill, to acquire them.

Danzaemon finally decided that Hikobei and Gorasaku, and their translator, would go by boat, without the arquebuses. However, they would take with them the bear’s claws and teeth, to serve as both presents and as reminders of the fighting prowess of the Japanese.

* * *

Hikobei and Gorasaku beached their rowboat on what a modern Californian would call Morro Strand State Beach. As they pulled the boat up to high ground, a peregrine falcon screeched at them, then sped toward its nest on nearby Morro Rock.

White Cloud stood on the beach to greet them. He and Talks-While-Walking exchanged signs. While the Indians of California didn’t have a universal or comprehensive sign language, like the one that would develop on the Great Plains, some simple, concrete concepts could be communicated to other tribes. Indeed, even the few Spanish visitors to California, like Cabrillo in 1542, had been signed to.

Hikobei was surprised to find another wooden planked boat on the beach. The Indians of Monterey Bay only paddled about, close to shore, in little tule rafts. This Chumash boat was made of pine, without any internal ribs, and painted red. The planks seemed to be tied together with plant fibers, and the seams were caulked with a strange black material. Later, he learned that the boat belonged to a visitor, one of the Island Chumash of the south, and the local Chumash themselves only had tule boats.

White Cloud ceremoniously led them back to his village, which was located a short distance inland, near a small creek. As they approached the village, a dog darted out, and started barking at them. This caught the attention of White Cloud’s tribesmen, several of whom came out, weapons in hand. After a sharp exchange with White Cloud, they lowered them, and smiled at the Japanese visitors.

They were introduced to the chief. He had done much traveling in his youth, indeed, he had been to Monterey Bay, and even as far as the cinnabar mine, and he still remembered a little of Talks-While-Walking’s tongue.

This didn’t come as a complete surprise to Hikobei, since he had known that in Talks-While-Walking’s tribe, there were those who could speak the language of a neighboring tribe.

What did come as a surprise was that one of the Chumash knew a few Japanese words. At first, Hikobei thought that one of the
kirishitan
fishermen might have been shipwrecked here. But no, the Indians of Monterey Bay had learned a little Japanese, and as they traded with their neighbors, the new words had passed along with the goods. So the Salinans learned Japanese from the Costanoans, and the Chumash from the Salinans. Given that California Indian languages were so diverse, Hikobei couldn’t help but wonder whether Japanese might soon become the trade language for the central California coast.

The chief welcomed them. Indeed, he told them that they could stay as long as they wish. “Only, please kill more bears.”

Maruya (Carmel, California),

Summer 1636

The eta were supposed to deliver their leather goods to a storehouse constructed near Maruya. They would lock them up, and then hoist a flag to let the
kirishitan
in Maruya know that they had made a delivery. The eta would be allowed time to withdraw to a camp down-shore, and the Maruyans would come pick up the leather, and leave supplies for the eta. The eta would return for these, then sail home.

This time, matters were different. What the Maruyans found in the storehouse wasn’t leather, but a note. The note demanded that the eta be given the same rights as other Japanese: to dress as they did, to live in the towns, to serve in the militia, to attend prayer services, and so forth. It was signed by the “
Shin-Heimin
”—the “new commoners.”

Kodachi Machi (Santa Cruz)

“We have a problem,” Shigetsuna announced. “The
eta have staged a
chosan ikki
.” It was a time-honored tactic for farmers at odds with their daimyo. They would harvest their crops, pack their things, and cross the border into the next han. Their lord, of course, could not lead soldiers into another daimyo’s domain without permission, not only from that daimyo, but from the central government. From this temporary safe haven, the farmers would send petitions to the latter, asking for it to intercede. If the dispute could not be settled quickly, the new daimyo might let them stay permanently, or the central government might get fed up with the old daimyo and dispossess him on grounds of mismanagement.