The Legend of Tyoga Weathersby (45 page)

“Yes,” the governor responded with a smile. “I believe that it can. It may take several years, but I believe it can.”

With that he turned and strode with confidence toward the carriage. Carry, Tyler, and Spotswood were taking their places in line to follow him, when he abruptly stopped and turned toward Tyoga.

“I will send for you at the Mattaponi village when I am ready to speak with you again. Until that time, no harm will come to your … friends.”

Bowing his head in agreement, Tyoga turned to tell the Mattaponi that for the time being, their lands were safe from the voracious grasp of the King.

Chapter 53

Consequences of the Accord

A
s the sound of the Governor’s carriage wheels disappeared down Center Street, Tyoga turned back toward the campfire and sat down next to Chief Blue Coat. The Chief had pushed aside the willow stump and was once again seated cross-legged on the softness of the bearskin rug.

The agreement was celebrated by Thunder Bow and the younger braves as a distinct coup. The consensus was that Tyoga had beaten the Governor at his own game. The Braves slapped him and each other on the back while planning the celebration they would have when they returned to Passaunkack.

Tyoga would be proclaimed the savior of their way of life and the deliverer of the Mattaponi people.

Chief Blue Coat and Tyoga were not so sure. After the others had gone to bed, Tyoga and the Chief stayed up until nearly dawn discussing what had occurred.

“My son, what you have done this night will be celebrated by the Mattaponi for many moons,” the chief said. “Your treaty with the white eyes has preserved the Mattaponi way of life, and that is good thing. But no one can tell what the future may hold. What this treaty means for the Mattaponi, and for the Algonquin nation will not be known for many moons.”

“I know, Blue Coat,” Tyoga said. “Even more than that, the consequences of what I have done this day will reach far beyond the land of the Algonquin people. I have purchased the peace for the Mattaponi at the expense of another Indian nation. That it is the Iroquois who will suffer as the result of my plan makes the treachery no less vile. It is true that the Iroquois ran the Shawnee out of their homeland in the Ohio territory. It is also a fact that they instigated the attack on Tessenatee that wiped out an entire Cherokee Village of defenseless women and children. They continue to this day to murder young Algonquin braves who are doing nothing more than hunting game to feed their families. Still, these trespasses do not make what I have done a right thing to do.”

In silence, the two men sat in silence for a long time listening to the quiet of the night. The summer sounds had been stilled by late fall’s chill. The call of a distant owl wrapped the blackness in its plaintive moan.

When the dawn approached, the men stoked the fire to keep them warm and dry.

“Wahaya-Wacon scolds himself too harshly,” Blue Coat said after thinking about Tyoga’s words. “What has occurred in the past does not make what you have done right, my son. But it makes what you have done less wrong. Here is the trouble with the accord you have struck.” He poked at the fire with an elm branch and watched the ashes rise in the updraft and scatter in all directions around the campsite. “That is the problem, my son.”

“What, Blue Coat?” Tyoga asked. “The rising ashes are the problem?”

“Yes, that is exactly it,” he replied. “Today, you have jabbed at the coals with a stick. Unlike the fire, you do not have the luxury of knowing what will rise from the coals. Here, sitting by the fire, we see what rises into the air. We can watch where the embers fall, and, should they ignite a tiny fire in some dried leaves or pine needles, we can run over and crush the flames out with our moccasins.”

“But, Blue Coat,” Tyoga argued, “it will take years before the plan I have proposed this night will come to pass. Other events will surely be more pressing to the King of England than some plot of land in the Iroquois nation. More than likely, this will be forgotten and nothing will come of it.”

“More than likely,” Blue Coat said shaking his head in agreement.

He jabbed at the fire one more time. Again the embers rose into the sky, dancing and whirling on unseen currents of air. Some fell to the ground and died a quiet, silent death.

“Look up, my son,” Blue Coat said to him. “Do you see that some of the embers go dark but continue to rise?”

“Yes,” Tyoga answered.

“They remain hot enough to start a fire still. But they do not let us know where—or when—they will land.”

Tyoga stared back down into the fire, and thought of home.

Chapter 54

A Very Wealthy Man

I
n the years that followed Tyoga Weathersby’s negotiations with Governor Knott, his legend grew to near god-like status among the tribes of the mid-Atlantic. From the villages of the Seminole tribes in the Carolinas to the Massachusettes Indians in New England, he and Trinity Jane were welcomed as honored guests. Tyoga’s counsel was sought and his legend revered.

They wanted for nothing.

Their smokehouse was always filled with elk, venison, turkey, and quail. Their root cellars overflowed with potatoes, yams, corn, and squash. Native American clothes beautifully fashioned from fox, mink, beaver, and bear filled an entire outbuilding from floor to ceiling. Their cupboards were brimming with ornately decorated pottery and earthenware.

The colonies were equally grateful for Tyoga’s negotiating skills with the tribes of the tidewater that had enabled mutually beneficial trade and commerce between the two nations.

The New England colonies, mid-Atlantic estates, and southern plantations rewarded him with gifts of the finest furnishings, linens, glass, and silverware money could buy. Trinity’s closets overflowed with the latest colonial fashions. Tapistries from the Far East, ivory from Africa, spices from the Orient, silks and porcelain from China and Zanzibar were delivered to Twin Oaks from benefactors unknown.

Twin Oaks had become so large and prosperous that Tyoga divided the acreage into five sectors. An overseer assigned to each sector was given the responsibility of supervising the labor of the families homesteading on their section of land. Each family was allowed to keep what they produced on their twenty acres, and shared in a percentage of the profits from the crops they tended for the estate on the rest of their sector’s land.

Field hands tended to the crops; shepherds watched over herds of sheep, goats, and cows. Carpenters maintained barns and corrals while constructing new outbuildings for stores and supplies.

In five short years, the Weathersby’s estate had expanded into a small community of fifteen cottages that lined a cobbled lane about two hundred yards from the main house where workers with specific trade skills lived with their families. Carpenters, a blacksmith, a wheelwright, and a tanner occupied some of the modest homes. Other cottages housed the families of those who served in the main house.

The residents of the “Lane”, as the cobbled road was called, were given a large communal plot of land to tend in which they grew the crops necessary to feed the Weathersbys and themselves.

The representative of the British government, Lord Governor Nott, proved to be an equally powerful ally of the young couple over the years since their meeting at Middle Plantation, now called Williamsburg.

Even though nothing had come of the scheme to rid the continent of the French and secure the riches of the New World for the British Crown, Governor Nott never forgot Tyoga’s ingenious plan that had gained such favor with his King. By his invitation, Tyoga and Trinity had become frequent guests of the aristocracy in Willimasburg, Newport News, Yorktown, and Philadelphia.

The link that the charismatic couple provided between the profiteers in the fur, lumber, and mineral trades and the Native Americans with whom the more scrupulous felt obliged to deal proved invaluable. The esteem in which Tyoga was held throughout the Indian Nations provided immediate credibility for the Europeans’ cause. Yet, the trust placed in him by his Native American brothers proved a wise investment because of his unwavering defense of their rights to the resources of their lands.

Tyoga and Trinity Jane had become statesmen, negotiators, interpreters of the laws of nature and man, and, in the end, king makers or dream breakers in the wild and open land.

The home that they had established in a glade on the banks of the Mattaponi River four and a half years ago had grown from a tiny survival shelter into one of the largest estates in Virginia.

Tyoga had become a very wealthy man. Life had been good for the Weathersby family until that cold, starry, winter night when the quiet was shattered by the unmistakable howl of Wahaya-Wacon.

Chapter 55

Return of Wahaya

T
he dowlful cry descended from the midnight shadows and blanketed the east slopes of the Appalachian Ridge across the Mattaponi River from Twin Oaks with an eerie prescience.Tyoga opened his eyes first, unsure of what he had just heard.

The second cry was not closer, but louder and less temperate in its missive.

T
hrowing off the heavy buffalo robes with a casual wave of his powerful arm, Tyoga placed his bare feet on the pine wood floor and scurried, bent at the waist, to peer out of the chiseled glass adorning their front door.

Sitting up in bed, Trinity anxiously asked, “Tyoga, what is it? What is wrong?”

“Shhh. Nothin’,” he replied. “Listen.”

As the third cry drifted down the mountainside to fill the glade, Tyoga turned to her and said with a grin so broad that it nearly stifled the words, “It’s him. It’s him. He’s come back!”

Throwing open the door latch so forcefully that it nearly ripped from its mooring, he stepped barefoot onto the freezing granite stoop of the cabin’s entranceway. Stopping, he cocked his head to listen. Jumping over the steps, he stood on the cold frost covered earth and peered off into the distance.

It was a clear night and the full moon lit the east slopes of the Appalachians from Turner’s Pass to Luther’s Gap. Tyoga could see across the reeds and open plain that carpeted the foothills on the far side of the Mattaponi River all the way to the base of the mountain the Indians called Akwesasne.

He cupped his hands over his mouth to shout as loudly as he could. “Wahaya! Wahaya-Wacon! Itse ta eho la eh alo!”

Dropping his hands to his sides, he gazed off into the distance.

With a furrowed brow, he swiveled his head from side to side straining to hear the wolf’s reply floating across the river and filling the glade with the news of his return. Just as he brought his hands to his mouth to call out again, he noticed a speck of gray bobbing above the tall grasses of the plain. Like a seagall floating on the surface of the Chesapeake before a storm, the gray speck bobbed along a course headed straight for Twin Oaks.

When Tyoga saw the flash of Wahaya’s bushy tail rise above the savanna grass, he knew that his spirit guide had returned.

Tyoga ran to the fire pit in the front yard of the cabin and stoked the dying embers into roaring flames to welcome the wolf home after nearly a five-year separation. As the flames rose to bathe the treeline in its warming glow, Tyoga called out again, “Wahaya! Itse ta eho!”

He turned to see Trinity standing in the doorway of the cabin wrapped in the red blanket. “T.J., it’s Wahaya. He’s come back to me.” He turned back to face the distant mountains.

Trinity had heard the true story about Tyoga’s encounter with the Runion wolf pack. She learned first hand that the stories told around campfires about the battle had been so embellished that they had become no more than a fuzzy reflection of the truth.

What had really taken place on that night so long ago was far more powerful than any story could ever recount.

Tyoga had told her the story about losing himself in the dark chasm of the wolf’s endless eyes with a reverence and respect that bordered on a religious-like worship of the mighty beast. Words failed him whenever he tried to explain how the magnificence of the wolf filled him with the call of the wild that infused his heart and ignited his soul.

The bond between man and beast was inexplicable and powerful beyond measure.

She also had heard Tyoga tell the tale of releasing Sunlei to love another man if that was fate’s call, and how he had sent Wahaya to protect and defend her from harm. The wolf’s return could only mean that Sunlei was settled and happy and safe, or that she was dead.

He would not leave her unless she were dead,
Trinity thought to herself.

She felt her heart skip a beat as the new life growing within her nudged its awareness of her fright.
Can he be smart enough to know that she is in danger beyond his means to help her, and that he has returned to take Tyoga away from me?
She placed her hand over her not yet burgeoning abdomen and rubbed gently. “Don’t worry, Little One,” she said out loud. “He will not leave us.”

Hearing Wahaya’s splash as he cast himself into the river to swim to be by his side sent Tyoga running toward the shore. When he got beyond the light of the fire, he thought better about surprising the wolf in the dark with his unexpected presence and slowly backed into the firelight. He heard Wahaya pause on the near bank to shake himself dry, and finally saw the brilliant, beautiful orbs of his glowing amber eyes emerge from the night as he walked slowly towards the fire.

Tyoga heard but did not respond to Trinity’s gasp at the sight of his long lost friend.

While she had heard Tyoga tell the tales, she had never witnessed the magnificence of Wahaya-Wacon. Trinity found him terrifyingly large and unimaginably muscular. His chest was heaving from the strenuous run across the marsh and his tongue was dripping a viscous fluid onto the ground. He was much taller than any wolf she had ever seen. If he were standing next to her, she could have rested her elbows on the top of his head. His eyes were mesmerizing. She watched them burn through the blackness as they fixed upon his soul mate. She wanted to look away, but she could not. She brought her tiny hand to her mouth, wrapped her other around her waist and remained frozen to the cabin door.