24

Disclaimer: this is history as spun by Disney, with some added spin from me.

Here we get to the native Americans: I am afraid this chapter is a bit of an oil-and-water mixture of straight Disney with Pre-Literate Society Lite, but I hope it basically works. When I found out that the Powhatans had a matrilineal succession system, so that the ruler's own children stayed 'commoners' and were not in line for power, I thought it fitted surprisingly well with the way Disney presented Pocahontas as a person with privilege but a bit of an outsider, and with no dynastic importance to restrict her movements. So I used it.

CHAPTER 3

Chief Wahunsunacaw was the most respected man in all the forest lands of the Tenakomakah, the Tidewater. The headmen of villages for seven days' march in every direction followed his leadership in war and took his advice in peace. It had not always been so. When Wahunsunacaw took the headship of his village as a young man, his people, the Powhatans, had been divided, in danger of being engulfed by their arch-enemies to the south, the Massawomecks. Then, the Massawomecks had had a great chief with many brothers, each with his own following of warriors to satisfy. One by one the Powhatan villages bore the brunt of their raids; the people would flee to the forest, and return to find their crops ransacked and their houses destroyed. Every time it grew harder to find help from their neighbours. Warriors were killed, young children died, marriages were put off, the people grew fewer. The time came when they faced the possibility of complete destruction. The last few would become slaves; the rivers, rocks and sacred trees would no longer be given their right names in their own language, and the ancestral spirits, lacking sustenance from the living, would fade on the wind and die. The remnants of one or two villages had already joined hands and leaped from the cliffs rather than live to see the slow end, when Wahunsunacaw became chief – at a younger age than was usual, for his three elder brothers had already died in the wars or the sicknesses that followed from them.

Wahunsunacaw believed that the tide was about to turn. Their enemies' chief was old and could not much longer prevent quarrels breaking out among the Massawomecks themselves, while the Powhatans had nothing left to lose. By diplomacy, courage and cunning he was able to forge the remnants of his people into an alliance which, for the first time in years, beat the Massawomecks in battle and brought their simmering feuds to a head. That had been nearly a generation ago. Since then he had fought again and again, now against factions of the Massawomecks, now against other tribes inland and northward who tried to take advantage of their weakness. And now, with grey showing in his hair, he had just won the battle that made him the acknowledged leader of the whole ocean coast. He had prevented the tide from turning back: he had forced a young chief of the resurgent Massawomecks to accept his patronage, bringing the number of his dependent chiefs to a dozen, apart from lesser headmen. But it was peace he wanted, even more than victory, and he knew that he had accomplished his life's work. Even if his strength began to fail from this moment, it would take longer than his lifetime for the security of his own village and kindred to be worn away. So secure was he in the leadership of his people that they had begun to call him by the people's own name: he was Chief Powhatan.

His warriors returned from battle, gathering at Werowocomoco, the village of his birth, for feasting and celebration before dispersing to their scattered homes. The sight of their canoes, long announced, brought the women running in from the fields and the children from their games by the water. Powhatan stood in the prow of the leading canoe, carrying his staff of office and wearing his ceremonial headdress of eagle feathers; but so secure was he in his people's regard that he broke the dignity of a victorious chief by smiling to see his veterans take their children on their knees, and laughing when the promised wife of one of the young men threw herself on him just as he climbed out of his boat, landing them both in the water with a splash. He walked through the crowd on the riverbank looking at it as a farmer looks at flourishing rows of corn he has planted. He had good reason. The fine young men and the beautiful girls, the crowds of excited children, were there because of him. It would take more than a few lean years to destroy the Powhatans, with their gods and their spirits, now.

The shaman, Kekata, stood in front of the chief's longhouse to meet him. The two raised their hands in greeting, then briefly embraced. Kekata had been Powhatan's adviser from the beginning, and was now older than anyone else in the tribe could reckon, but still strong, and very wise.

For all his contentment, Powhatan's eyes had been searching since before he landed, and now he asked: 'Where is my daughter?'

'You know Pocahontas,' said Kekata indulgently. 'She has her mother's spirit; she goes where the wind takes her.'

It saddened Powhatan that she was not there to greet him. Since the girl's mother had died, Pocahontas was the living thing he loved best in the world. He cared for his present wife, his other children, his sister's sons and daughters who would be chiefs and bearers of chiefs after him, but there was no one like Pocahontas. He recognised and loved the strain of the wild wind in mother and daughter that assured him that their love was freely given. Yet he wished that Pocahontas had been there to smile at him when he came home.

*****

Pocahontas was miles away, standing, as she loved to do, in a high place. A cliff overlooked the Quiyoughcohannock river where it broadened ready to meet the great Tidewater; over this cliff fell a waterfall, and beside the head of the falls a rock hung almost in empty air. Pocahontas stood on it, turning a little now and then to feel the wind in her hair and try to understand, as she sometimes fancied she could, what the wind was saying. The water below was glassy-pale in the afternoon shadow of the cliffs. Far away towards the sea the dark green swells of the forest became a smoky blue. Pocahontas knew the land well; a complicated and beautiful tracery of its paths and waterways and meeting points filled her mind. But despite its familiarity, when she looked at it from above like this the blue distance held a promise of something unknown and yet to be revealed. Sometimes it almost choked her with excitement. Sometimes she felt sad, fearing that whatever was waiting there would grow tired of waiting for her, of being passed by on all her explorations, and would melt away in the morning mist and be gone. What could the something be, after all? What path she could choose in life could possibly fulfill a promise that was so piercingly sweet in itself?

The wind's voice was suddenly overlaid by another voice, haunted with distance, but human:

'Pocahontas!'

The caller left long spaces between the syllables of the name, but still the echoes from the cliffs blurred them together. Pocahontas looked down and saw a canoe far below, small as a tale of the distant past, yet bringing the call of familiarity.

Her friend Nakoma was shouting up to her. She strained to hear:

'Your - fa- ther's – com-ing! Come - down - here!'

Pocahontas's wistfulness suddenly dissolved in a smile of joy. 'He's back!' she said to the wind. 'Coming!' she yelled over the edge. She turned and began to run, long-legged, down the trail, which was fringed with huckleberry bushes and barred by afternoon sunshine slanting between the trees. Then she considered the distance, changed her mind, turned round, and ran much faster back up to the rock. Without a pause she ran out along it, leaped, and dived towards the deep pool below the waterfall.

'No! Not that ... way,' Nakoma tailed off, watching helplessly with her hands to her mouth. She pushed her pang of fear aside with annoyance as she watched her friend plunge down, supremely confident, graceful as a swallow, to meet the water at a perfect angle and slip under with barely a splash. 'Show-off,' she muttered.

Pocahontas stayed under so long that her anxiety was re-awakened.

'Pocahontas! Are you all right?' she called, half standing and straining her eyes towards the spot where the girl had gone under.

'Pocahontas?'

Silence under the cliffs.

'Well, you better be all right,' declared Nakoma, sitting down and folding her arms, 'because I'm not coming in after you – oo!'

The canoe suddenly turned right over, plunging Nakoma under the water. She bobbed up beside it, spluttered, and saw Pocahontas in the shade of the canoe watching her, just the eyes; the rest of her, even her nose and mouth, was still under water.

'Don't you think we're getting a little old for these games?' Nakoma demanded, coughing and spitting.

At that, Pocahontas surfaced and blew a jet of water in her face before dissolving into giggles. Nakoma forgot her dignity and drenched her in turn with a raking splash, and for a while both girls sent water up in showers until they were so weak with laughing that they had to hang onto the side of the canoe if they were not to drown. There they floated, kicking their legs in the cold, light river water and feeling little fish nibbling their toes.

'Come on, help me get this thing turned over,' said Nakoma at last. They clambered in. Nakoma reached for the paddle while Pocahontas wrung water out of her long, loose hair.

'What were you doing up there, anyway?' asked Nakoma.

'Thinking.'

'About the dream again?' Nakoma's interest was slightly anxious. She and Pocahontas were the only two girls in the village who had come of age together in their year, and they had always exchanged confidences. Nakoma dearly loved to interpret dreams, eye the young men and compare their prowess, and gossip about matchmaking; she no longer felt quite easy with Pocahontas, who had recently become moody and quiet, and took some things too lightly and others much too seriously. But here was a hope of renewed intimacy, and she pursued the matter: 'Do you think you understand it yet?'

'I know it means something,' said Pocahontas testily, 'I just don't know what.'

'You should ask your father,' suggested Nakoma, who could not see why a girl with a father as wise and famous as Pocahontas's should lack an answer to any question in the world.

Pocahontas lent the idea serious attention, but as if she had not thought of it herself, which also surprised Nakoma.

By the time they had paddled the canoe upstream to the confluence with their home river, carried it round the rapids, and launched it again for the last stretch up to the village, afternoon was becoming evening. The smell of smoke blew out to meet them at the landing-place as game and corn that the men had captured from the enemy roasted for the night's feasting. The note of a drum sounded from the meeting-place at the centre of the village, an oval open space set about with carved wooden pillars. In and around it the whole village was already gathered. The two girls sidled up to the edge of the crowd. To the beat of the drum, the chief was telling the story of the battle, calling the warriors who had distinguished themselves to stand around him.

A bull-necked young man was at his side. '...none so bravely as Kocoum,' the girls heard Powhatan say, 'for he attacked with the fierce strength of the bear, destroying every enemy in his path ...'

Kekata, a dish of red ochre paint in his hand, pressed his knuckles into it and then pressed them on Kocoum's chest, once on each side, leaving the paw prints of a bear plain to be seen.

'He has proved himself in this battle ...'

'Oh, he's so handsome!' breathed Nakoma to Pocahontas as the girls still stood unnoticed.

'I especially love the smile,' returned Pocahontas, in a voice not so low as to disguise its cutting edge, as Kocoum looked impassively out over the villagers' heads. Nakoma shrugged in annoyance. Of course, Kocoum was Pocahontas's cousin, so she could not be expected to be very excited about him; but there was no pleasing her these days. At that moment, however, Powhatan glimpsed his daughter, and in the middle of his recital flashed her a smile of greeting that made him look like a young man. Nakoma had to admit that there was a difference.

Pocahontas could not speak with her father that evening. They embraced quickly when the victory recital and chants broke up into general feasting, but Powhatan had to take the place of honour among the men and Pocahontas to join the women and make sure that the guests had all they needed. She now wished that she had come back earlier, so that they could have had a little time together before the feast began. She had begun to worry about him. Of course she could not tell him so.

The warriors were tearing into their roasted joints of venison; Pocahontas and the other girls passed along gracefully to hand them drink and cornbread. The most important women, too, were served: the chief's wife, a pretty, doe-eyed young girl, and, even before her, the chief's sister, Nijlon, sleek and smooth-haired, surrounded by her younger children, solemn little creatures polished like soapstone carvings. Her eldest son was expected to be the next chief, for although power was wielded by the spear, it was passed on through the womb. Nijlon was looking discontented; she had not liked to see Kocoum singled out for the chief's praise. He, too, was a royal kinsman, the son of her aunt, who also sat there. But Aunt Sukanon had suffered the disgrace of being taken hostage by the Massowomecks, and coming back with a little boy who was the son of the enemy. Nijlon had stayed in her village, and a respectable succession of allied chiefs and younger brothers, important but not too important, had come to her. She had no doubt that her children were the chief's true heirs.

When everyone was served, Pocahontas sat down cross-legged, more than ready for her own food. But her eyes were drawn to the sombre group of men and boys still standing a little apart from the ring of feasters. They were the hostages who had been taken from the Massowomecks to compel them to keep the peace. It was their food that the Powhatans were eating with triumph and laughter, but they got none as yet. They had been driven on ahead of the returning soldiers with no rest; two or three of the young boys were weak and fainting, and the men held them upright as best they could; if any slipped to the ground, the Powhatans threw bones, jeered and kicked them back to their feet.

Pocahontas could not join in the boisterous laughter of the other wives and girls, showing the captives their place. She knew that as the evening went on, and the people's battle-wrath wore off, first one family and then another would almost surreptitiously throw or pass food to the hostages, then come closer, clap some man or boy on the shoulder and claim him as their temporary kin, to take him into their home and vouch for him as long as he remained prisoner; until he was redeemed and went home, or stayed so long he was adopted into the tribe, or until his life was forfeit. Mercy would come, but until it did, Pocahontas could barely swallow her food. This was one of the things that made it hardest for her to feel at one with her people, and, if the truth be known, why she had lingered on the cliffs and almost come late to the victory feast.

At least no one's life was forfeit tonight. Those were the terrible times: when defeated chiefs showed treachery, or when there was some prisoner whom nobody wanted, or who had killed someone whose kin demanded vengeance. At the end of the night, when sunrise approached, such a man would be taken to the high cliff above the village where all the tidewater could be seen, where only men were allowed to go, and the chief would sacrifice him to the gods. Pocahontas tried not to think about this part of her father's task. She knew how to use a hunting knife and shoot with a bow; she could imagine killing a man in battle-frenzy, when it was his life or yours and your friends' that must be lost. But to beat out a life that lay helpless at your feet, that was a different matter. She knew that her father could do it only when he had passed deep into the power of the gods, so that it was their anger that struck the blow, not his own. She had seen his face when he came back from such journeys, and noticed how he would not speak to anyone he loved for hours afterwards, until the madness had passed. She was very glad that it did not have to be tonight.

And at last the joy of the feast swept everyone up; even the prisoners had their hunger and weariness eased. Drums and flutes began to play, and people got up to dance. The men did the victory dance, leaping and twisting to shrieks of acclaim from the women. Then the young women danced for the men, Pocahontas in the lead. She flung aside all her doubts as she joined hands with the other girls and swayed back and forward in their line. To dip and turn and balance with measured grace, to let your body say to the warriors: you kept our honour for us, and thus we present it to you; to be one with the feast, the music, the force of life itself: this was almost the best thing in the world. As she passed the row of young men, tossing her hair out of her eyes in the firelight, she noticed Kocoum. Several of his friends were standing around chaffing him, raising cups to his triumph, and a little further off a number of excited small boys were leaping about hoping to be noticed, but he did not seem even to realise that they were there. Could he be looking at her? For a moment she met a flashing glance from his eyes. Abashed, she looked down, hoping she was not dancing too forwardly. When she glanced at Kocoum again, he was gazing into the distance more abstractedly than ever.

It stayed in her mind because of what she found out later. The children mostly fell asleep where they sat at about midnight and were carried indoors by their mothers, but it was nearer dawn than dusk by the time all the men had found places in the longhouse or around the fires and were snoring under their cloaks. Pocahontas had gone to sleep in the small hut adjoining the chief's residence, where she lived. She woke up in the grey morning when her raccoon came to see her. In the woods, she sometimes rescued young animals that had lost their mothers, and sometimes sat still and quiet long enough to coax the wild ones to keep her company: she liked their silence, their mischief, the fact that they only came when they really wanted to be with her and not because they felt they ought to. She had given this raccoon the name Meeko. He lived in a great willow-tree down the river, but came to her when he wanted extra food. She heard him slither down through the smoke-hole and hop from rafter to rafter until he was directly above her bed of willow branches, then drop neatly down beside her. His head pushed itself under her hand.

Pocahontas decided to get up; she would not sleep any more. She stood combing her hair, now and then nudging Meeko out of the way as he hung round her neck. The skin hanging over the doorway of the hut twitched at the corner and a voice said, 'Daughter?'

'Wingapo, Father,' cried Pocahontas and ran to the doorway, dragging the skin aside to let him in quickly. Meeko escaped to the rafters.

Powhatan threw his arms around her. 'I'm so glad you're back safely,' murmured Pocahontas, leaning her head on his chest.

He kissed the top of her head, then held her away from him and stroked her hair back from her forehead. 'So am I,' he said. 'Now we can remember what life is really for, for a while.'

He stepped back from her. He was still wearing his long cloak and his eagle headdress. Plainly he had not slept at all; his face was tired. Now, however, he took the headdress off and laid it on one of the roof beams. 'Some of the warriors will be leaving at sunrise,' he said, 'and I must be there to say farewell. But there is time for us to talk first. I want to know everything you have been doing.'

Pocahontas decided to plunge straight in. 'Father, for many weeks now a strange dream has been coming to me. I think it's telling me something is about to happen: something that stirs me ...'

To her surprise, Powhatan looked gratified. He said gently, with slight self-consciousness, turning half away from her, 'Yes: something is about to happen.'

'What is it?' she asked with relief. Might the answer to her questions be quite simple for him?

'Kocoum has asked to seek your hand in marriage,' said Powhatan, turning to face Pocahontas fully again.

She was dumbfounded.

'Marry Kocoum?' she said after a moment's pause – not in indignation, or distaste, but more as if the two words were completely unrelated and she could not believe that her father had really meant to do anything so strange as to speak them in the same breath.

'I told him it would make my heart glad,' he said, taking her by the shoulders, showing the beginnings of distress that she did not view the prospect with quite as much delight as he did.

Pocahontas groped for words. 'But he's so … serious,' she said lamely. It was not what she meant. How to explain something so obvious, something that her father, of all people, should have known in his bones?

But it seemed that he, too, felt surprise at having to explain to her. 'My daughter, this is the best offer you can have. You know my rank does not pass down to you, and your mother's kin are all dead. Kocoum is of royal blood, and will give you the standing you deserve; he is brave and loyal and will build you a good house with sturdy walls. No harm will come to you with him.'

'Father, I think my dream is pointing me down a different path …' began Pocahontas, but Powhatan cut her off. 'This is the right path for you,' he said with decision.

'But why can't I choose …' Pocahontas objected. Just then, the raccoon, who had been scampering about in the rafters, tumbled into her arms. She could not suppress a giggle; then, all at once feeling ashamed of herself, she straightened her face and looked up at her father, who was gazing at her, not exactly impatiently, but with a slight tightness around his mouth.

He drew in his breath. 'Come with me,' he said, and put his arm round her shoulder. Together they walked out of the hut and down a path past tall trees, dripping with dew, to the edge of the river. Meeko trotted along behind. Pocahontas's bare feet tingled in the morning cold.

'I love to see you carefree,' said Powhatan gently. 'But I will not be here for ever. You are brave and wise too, and I want you to be placed where those good things in you will have proper use, not be swept aside.' Pocahontas knew, without being told, that it was the chief's sister who might sweep her aside, if Powhatan died. 'Even the wild mountain stream must one day join the great river,' he went on. 'And however proud and strong the river is, he will always choose the smoothest course. You have to learn to be steady – as the river is steady…'

They were both silent for a minute, gazing at the flowing water. Then he turned to her and held something up. It was a necklace made of joined plaques of smooth gleaming mother-of-pearl, with a delicate white shell hanging in the centre. 'Your mother wore this at our wedding,' said Powhatan, and clasped it round Pocahontas's neck. 'It was her dream to see you wear it at your own.' He stood back from her with his head on one side. 'It suits you,' he said, with the smile that hid the deep lines in his cheeks for a moment.

Do you think Mother would have married Kocoum? The question was burning on Pocahontas's lips, but as she looked into his face she could not ask it.

He took her hand and pressed it, and as she still stood silent he walked slowly away from her, back up the path towards the longhouse and the fire.

Pocahontas sank down in the grass, still gazing at the river, in confusion. Her father had kindly left her alone to think about it. Think about it! What he said was so right and reasonable, yet it turned the world upside-down. Her thoughts tried to get a purchase somewhere on his words, to rebuild a frame of her own to set them it.

'He wants me to be steady like the river,' she said aloud. Grey and transparent in the dawn light, it rolled ceaselessly past. Then, all of a sudden, right beside the landing-place where the canoes were beached, up bobbed the sleek dark bodies of a pair of otters. They twirled in the water and for a moment their clever faces grinned at Pocahontas, barely a canoe's length away, before they dived again and vanished.

'But it's not steady at all!' she said triumphantly.

She knew what she needed to do next. She caught hold of the end of her own canoe and pushed it off, feeling the pebbles of the riverbed shifting under her toes; she jumped in, seized the paddle, tucked her wet feet under her to warm them up, and floated off downstream.