The Broken Land (2 page)

Men were the Keepers of the forest. They were generally responsible for the hunt and the execution of warfare. They cleared the fields for the crops, built the longhouses, constructed palisades and canoes. They hunted, fished, fought, and brought home captives to restore the spiritual strength of the clans. Men were appointed as village chiefs by clan mothers, after which they organized and planned attacks, and served on the national Grand Council, relaying the wishes of their Peoples. They were also responsible for negotiating agreements related to trade, territory, and war.

Men and women also Kept their own histories. There were “men’s stories,” and “women’s stories,” and they were generally told around separate council fires. This cultural tradition, virtually unknown to the early ethnographers, dictated which versions of the Peacemaker story survived to be passed down through the centuries. Why? Because the first recorders of the Peacemaker epic were almost exclusively European men who’d been born and bred in the Victorian era. Not only were they oblivious to the fact that women Kept their own stories, but as outsiders they may not have been allowed to sit at the women’s council fires to hear their sacred stories. As a result, nearly every version of the Peacemaker epic that was recorded was a men’s story. Most of Jigonsaseh’s story has been lost.

There are a few fragments, however. One of our goals in this quartet of books has been to pull the fragments together and restore Jigonsaseh to her proper place in the epic. From what we can tell, she was the pivotal clan matron responsible for the success of the League. She approved the Peacemaker’s mission, and he consulted her on every important decision. One fragment says he refused to begin any meeting until she arrived. Without her support and leadership, it’s doubtful that Dekanawida and Hiyawento would have been able to establish a lasting peace. We owe special thanks to Haudenosaunee scholars Pete Jemison and Barbara Mann for their meticulous research on Jigonsaseh.

We know from the oral history that Jigonsaseh used food to create alliances. One story fragment says she fed every passing war party, no matter their nation. She did this to buy goodwill and keep her People safe. It is also probable that she used food to create other types of alliances. The oral history says that Jigonsaseh—at the request of Dekanawida—went to the People of the Flint, the Mohawk, to convince them to join an alliance to overthrow the evil cannibal sorcerer Atotarho. She also rallied the female leaders of the nations and convinced them of the truth of Dekanawida’s vision. She was apparently a formidable politician. She used the clan system as the glue to hold the fragile alliance together long enough for the idea of the League to gain a foothold. As such, she cofounded the League with Dekanawida and Hiyawento.

The few hints we have about her personal history are intriguing. In one version of the epic (Hewitt, 1932), she is Dekanawida’s mother. In another, she’s his grandmother. In yet another, she doesn’t know Dekanawida at all. Rather, she is from a different nation, the People of the Mountain—the Seneca. Dekanawida seeks her counsel early in his life, just as he’s beginning his peace initiative. Some stories say she was born among the Wyandot Attiwandaronk, also known as the Neutral Nation. A few versions say she was the direct descendant of Sky Woman, through her daughter, the Lynx. Others say Jigonsaseh was the Lynx.

Regardless of the diversity of elements, one thing is almost certain: She was the head clan matron of the League of the Iroquois. In Chief David Cusick’s Keeping (“Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations,” 1825), the Jigonsaseh in the Peacemaker story was the ninth woman to carry that name.

The other two heroes, Dekanawida and Hiyawento, have been extensively chronicled. An excellent discussion of both characters can be found under “The Second Epoch of Time,” in the
Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee,
edited by Bruce Johansen and Barbara Mann.

Hiyawento (Ayonwantha) became, by virtually all accounts, Dekanawida’s closest friend and advisor. However, story variants picture him as either the right-hand man of the evil genius Atotarho, or Atotarho’s greatest political opponent and the victim of the chief’s treachery. Sometimes, as in the Johnson’s 1881 version, Hiyawento is the Peacemaker. Dekanawida doesn’t exist, and Jigonsaseh and Atotarho appear only at the end, and play bit parts.

Nearly every nation claims he was either born among their people, or they adopted him. The tragedy that befell his family, as you will see in
The Broken Land,
is the central feature of Hiyawento’s story. Though sometimes his daughters are involved, other times it’s his brothers or his wife. His grief drives him to create the “Truth belts,” known in modern society as wampum belts. This term, however, is incorrect.
Wampum
is an Algonkian term. The correct Iroquoian term is
otekoa.
Hiyawento’s grief was also the source for the creation of the Condolence Ceremony, which is the sacred heart of the League.

The great villain, Atotarho (Tadadaho), in most versions, is depicted as the mad tyrant of the Onondaga, whom many believed to be a cannibal sorcerer. However, in Chief David Cusick’s Keeping, Atotarho is the hero of the story. None of the other characters exist.

The Peacemaker’s personal history is perhaps the most interesting. His stories are certainly the most divergent. As with Hiyawento, nearly every nation claims he was born among their people, or adopted by them. The earliest versions of Dekanawida’s life bear striking resemblances to the life of the Creation Hero, Tarachiawagon. He is shown as a spiritual emissary, a visionary man, who came to the aid of the Iroquois when they were on the verge of destroying themselves. Other versions say he was born of a virgin among the Wyandots north of Lake Ontario. These versions show him being abused by his people, who did not believe in him. When he left them, he paddled across Lake Ontario in a white stone canoe and made peace among the Iroquois. Afterward, he traveled across the ocean and became the person known to Christians as Jesus.

While every major plot element you encounter in these books can be found in written sources, the oral history, or the archaeological record, the profoundly different versions of the story pose unique problems for anyone trying to decipher what actually might have happened. As you read this novel, you will see how we sifted through the different versions, pieced them together, and made sense of them.

No matter which variant you believe, the Peacemaker story is astonishing. In a time of extreme climatic and cultural stress, Dekanawida managed to pull together five warring nations. We think his message of compassion and spiritual unity is as powerful today as it was six hundred years ago. Given current events, perhaps more so.

T
welve summers after
The Dawn Country …

I
don’t feel my body, just the air cooling as color leaches from the forest, leaving the land strangely gray and shimmering. When the blue sky goes leaden, and the rounded patches of light falling through the trees curve into bladelike crescents, I faintly begin to sense my skin. I have the overwhelming urge to run, but I can’t. My legs do not exist. Instead, my fingers work, clenching into hard fists, unclenching. A great cloud-sea swims beneath me, a restless dark ocean punctured by a great tree with flowers of pure light; its roots sink through Great Grandmother Earth and plant themselves upon the back of the Great Tortoise floating in the primeval ocean below.

As though the birds know the unthinkable is about to happen, they tuck their beaks beneath their wings and close their eyes, roosting in the middle of the day. Noisy clouds of insects that only moments ago twisted through the forest like tiny tornadoes vanish. Butterflies settle to the ground at my feet and secret themselves amid the clouds. An eerie silence descends.

I lift my eyes just as Morning Star flares in the darkening sky. As though she’s caused it, fantastic shadow-bands, rapidly moving strips of light and dark, flicker across the meadow.

Dimly, I become aware that I am not alone. Gray shades drift through the air around me, their hushed voices like the distant cries of lost souls. We are the last congregation. The dead who still walk and breathe.

“Odion?”

It is my friend’s voice. Wrass, who is now called Hiyawento. He uses my boyhood name. I turn to see him standing beside me. He points.

Beyond the cloud-sea at the western edge of the world, an amorphous darkness rises from the watery depths and slithers along the horizon like the legendary Horned Serpent who almost destroyed the world at the dawn of creation. Strange black curls, like gigantic antlers, spin from the darkness and rake through the cloud-sea.

Elder Brother Sun trembles in the sky. A black hole opens in the universe, and he slowly turns his back to flee. There is a final brilliant flash, and blindingly white feathers sprout from his edges. Blessed gods, he’s flying. Flying away. If he leaves us, the world will die … unless I do something.

I know this. I don’t know how, but it is up to me to stop the death of the world.

A crack—like the sky splitting—blasts me. I look down and see a great pine tree pushing up through a hole in the earth, its four white roots slashing like lightning to the four directions. A snowy blanket of thistledown blows toward it like a great wave, spreading out all over the world.

I stagger as my body comes alive in a raging flood. Just as I turn to speak to the Shades … a child cries out. The sound is muffled and wavering, seeping through the ocean of other voices. It sounds like the little boy is suffocating, his mouth covered with a hand or hide.

Fear freezes the air in my lungs.

As though he has his lips pressed to my ear, a man orders,
“Lie down, boy. Stop crying or I’ll cut your heart out.”

The Dream bursts. For a time, there is only brilliance. Then I see the flowers of the World Tree, made of pure light, fluttering down, down, disappearing into utter darkness … and I’m falling, tumbling through nothingness with tufts of cloud trailing behind me … .

One

Sky Messenger

D
arkness is coming.

I halt at the edge of the birches and steady myself by placing a hand against a massive granite boulder, concentrating on the bright yellow leaves that whirl through the cold air. The scent of snow suffuses Wind Mother’s breath. While my fingers gouge the rock, I gaze up at the deep blue thunderheads standing like fortresses above the chestnuts and sycamores that ring the meadow. Dusk’s purple halo has faded to nothingness, leaving the white tree trunks steel gray, the dry grasses silver.

The old wolf who always strides at my side lifts his gray muzzle and scents the air, returning me to the acrid odor of burning longhouses. The scent is strong, mixing eerily with the cries of the wounded who scatter the battlefield. I sink against the boulder, hoping that, for the moment, shadows hide me from my warriors.

The other members of the war party have retreated to the nearby meadow to cook supper and tell stories, each trying—as I am—to forget the horror that surrounds him. My thoughts drift and, as always, return to her.

… long naked legs whispering through the spring grass … pearl-colored Cloud People scudding overhead. Struggling for air, for more of her. Floating weightlessly through the deep wildflower-scented afternoons, her lips upon my body like fire.

I’m shaking. I cast a glance over my shoulder to make certain no one is watching me. I am a deputy war chief. I cannot afford weakness. Dozens of campfires glitter. Here and there, men laugh, and their breath condenses in the cold air and glides across the fire-dyed meadow.

Beyond the warriors, near the river, the captives sit roped together, shivering, gazing around with wide, stunned eyes. Four women and eleven children. I have counted the children over and over. In the morning they will be marched off to alien villages, adopted into strange new clans, or killed, as suits the whims of the matrons. The sight always sickens me. As a boy, my village was attacked and I was captured. I know from the inside what it feels like … and the utter despair still haunts me. To this day, I refuse to take captives, which does not endear me to the clan matrons of the Standing Stone People. Many times my warriors have voted me war chief, but the matrons refuse to allow it. They say I am not ready.

They are right.

I clench my fists and turn my gaze to the burning village, where flames still leap through the charred husks of twelve longhouses. We arrived this afternoon. Well thought out, every possible permutation calculated and planned for by War Chief Deru, our victory required only three hands of time. Most of the villagers were still in their bedding hides, sick with the unknown fever that ravages the land. They barely put up a fight.