Chapter One The White Men Arrive
It was early morning when I was awoken from my sleep. My friend Squanto was shaking me awake saying something about sleeping in to long. "Okay I'm awake." I waited a few moments to collect my thoughts "Squanto what time is it?"
"Its almost time for you to start another hunt Massasoit. If I hadn't known any better I would say that you were up all night planning out how the hunt will go , But knowing you, you just are as lazy as usual and 'wanted to conserve your energy'" Said Squanto chuckling at the last bit. He was right though I am to lazy to come up with a real strategy I usual just go in and whatever happens, happens. Most of the time the hunts are successful but when they arent well some interesting stories come from those.
"Is everyone ready?" I asked
"Everyone is waiting for you. Some of them are betting if I can wake you up or not" Squanto says as he starts to leave my tent so I can get dressed in private.
"What are they betting with?" I ask as I start to get dressed.
"Their betting with their portion of the hunt. If you ask me their being idiots for using that for bets, but hey I cant stop them and I dont really want to."
"Why is that?" I ask as I finished getting dressed, and make my way out of my tent.
"Why do you think? I'm to lazy to order them around."
"Well lets go and start the hunt before they get impatient and head here to 'wake' me up in person"
"Remember the last time they did that? I remember them throwing you in the lake to wake you up" At this we both laugh at the memory.
"I remember you being the one that came up with that idea." I say this as we start heading towards the group of hunters. It doesn't take long before we see them all waiting patiently with their horses. One of the men has both Squato's and my house next to him, as he sees us coming he leads the horses to us. I thank him as I stroke the under-chin of my horse.
"Alright men are you ready to go hunting?"
"We are ready when you are cheif." They all say. With that I mount my house and moition my men to do the same.
"Then lets go hunting" I say as my men and I start heading to our hunting ground.
Our prey today was a group of cattle that was spotted to be grazing nearby. It was rare for catle to be found near us so the night they were spotted a meeting was held to decide who would go hunt the cattle. Obviously I was chosen to lead this hunting group. In total there were about twenty men that came along with me (Squanto included). So you can imagine that it was easy to kill a few cattle seeing as all they do when we come galloping in on our horses is run. All we had to do was shot a couple arrows (give or take a few dozen) and we had two cattle dead and ready to be gutted and took us a couple of hours to get back home but at the end the women were cooking the meat. One of my scouts came running to me.
"Chief I-"he tries to say something as a meet him halfway and put my hand over his mouth and put a finger on my lips to tell him to be quite. Whatever he has to say it should be said in private. This is just because if its bad news I dont want my tribesmen panicking, better to be cautious.
"lets head to my tent. You can tell me in there"
"Yes chief" He says finally calming down. It doesn't take us long to get to my tent. before he can say what he wants to say I tell him to be quit about it,
"Chief I-I-I saw I large group of white men leaving a big boat. What should we do?"
"Where did you see these white men?" I ask in a serious tone. a few years ago my friend Squanto had been taken by white men and it was only with luck that he had managed to escape and come back home. All Squato had said was that he was forced to learn their language and work for them. The news of white men arriving near us mad me angry but I didn't want to do anything that would put my men in harms way if these white men had those mysterious weapons that could kill anything when it was pointed at something.
"I spotted them east of us.I don't really know what they were doing." I was thinking of the options I had. On one hand I could call a meeting with the elders to discuss this matter but who knows what they would want to do. On the other hand I could either let the entire tribe know and probably have everyone wanting to go at the white man's throats, and probably fail when the white men brought in those strange weapons of theirs, or I could tell the scout to keep this to himself while I think of something else. With all this in mind I decided to call the meeting. I need other people,s thoughts on this even if there is a chance that they may panic.
"Go gather the elders, also get Squanto and make sure you tell them that this is of the utmost importance. I want you present for the meeting as well." With a nod of his head to show that he understood he went to go get the elders and Squanto.
It wasn't that long before all the elders were gathered as well as the scout, and Squanto. Most of the elders had puzzled looks on their took a while for all of them to get settled into their places I moitend for the scout to sit by me and Squanto.
"The reason why had you all gathered here is because I was notified by this scout here, that there was a large group of white men to the east of us" All of the elders had surprised looks on their faces. They all turned their faces to the scout I could tell they were about to question him about the validity of what he had told me.
"Is this true?" One of the elders asked.