Remember the Morning Read Free

the same thing to me and Clara. Down on the riverbank, other Indians were fighting Joshua and the Africans and the white men who had brought us to this terrible place. They killed everyone except a few white men who jumped into one of the bateaux and escaped downstream.
    Clara and I screamed and screamed and finally clung to each other, our eyes closed, trying to escape into darkness, blankness.
    When we opened our eyes again the Indians had dragged the furniture from the bateaux to the house and shoved it through the front door and windows and set everything on fire. Flames began crackling and roaring inside the house; smoke gushed from the smashed windows.
    â€œFATHER!” I screamed one last time. For the next eighteen thousand days and nights of my life I would never speak that word again.
    Seizing the leather ropes around our necks, the Indians trotted into the forest. In minutes we went from sunlight to shadow. The great trees loomed around us, their leaves so thick the blue sky was lost. Looking back, I saw tongues of fire leaping from the windows of the house, making it look as if it were full of devils. Mother had told me that devils breathed fire from their mouths and noses and eyes. I wondered if the Indians were devils and were taking us to hell.
    Clara and I and Peter and Eva had to run to keep up with the Indians. If we fell down we were dragged along the ground until we managed to scramble to our feet again. Soon our hands and elbows and knees and feet were cut and bleeding. No one seemed to care.
    Pettikin? I could not understand why Grandfather’s friends, the Mohawks, did not help us. Why did these Indians hate us? Were Father and Mother and Joshua and Myrtle killed because they had broken God’s law?
    When we finally stopped for the night, the Indians flung themselves on the ground and slept. No one lit a fire or had anything to eat. A cold wind swept through the gloomy forest, rustling the leaves of the great trees. Somewhere an owl hooted, a wolf howled. Clara and I clung together, whimpering and trembling.
    I wondered if what had happened in the house was a bad dream, like Clara’s. Maybe I would wake up soon and Mother would give me warm milk and honey and I would forget the whole thing. I wanted to forget it. I wanted to stop feeling cold and numb and afraid. I wanted to be happy again.
    Pettikin . The word no longer meant anything. Memory had become an enemy.

ONE
    T WELVE YEARS LATER, IN THE VILLAGE of Shining Creek on the shore of Lake Ontario, the girl who once had been Catalyntie Van Vorst slept in the longhouse of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois. I no longer remembered my white name. I was She-Is-Alert, daughter of Early-Day, granddaughter of She-Shakes-The-Trees. (I am translating the Seneca names, which are almost unpronounceable for white people’s tongues.) You who will read this story in the distant future may wonder how I could forget my white name and the way my parents died beneath the hatchets of Seneca warriors in that terrible moment on the Mohawk River. Few people understand how pain and sorrow affect a child’s soul.
    Grief not only makes memory a child’s enemy. It awakens in her soul a hunger for love and a desperate desire to escape the shadowy ghosts that loom in dreams and darkness. A grieving child turns to love like a plant to the spring sun, not only for nourishment but for the healing balm of forgetfulness.
    I found love in abundance in the village of Shining Creek. Having recently lost a child to sickness, my Seneca mother’s heart was full to bursting with love that she yearned to bestow on someone. I became her favorite child—in fact the favorite child of everyone in the longhouse of the Turtle Clan. They were fascinated by my white skin, my blond hair. Other mothers gave me toys. The warriors let me play with their dice and marveled at how often I threw winning numbers. They said I would bring them good