Remember the Morning Read Free Page A

luck.
    Beyond the longhouse lay the glistening lake and the winding creek from which the village drew its name. With the other children, I swam in the lake and wandered the nearby forest in the spring and summer and fall. I learned to identify the calls of the birds and chased brilliant butterflies around the cornfield as my mother sowed and hoed our golden crop. As the seasons turned and the great trees shed their leaves and budded and shed again at the end of another summer, a contentment that transcended understanding grew in my soul.
    When the snows of winter whirled out of the north, my mother and
grandmother wrapped me in bearskin against the cold and told me ancient tales about famous warriors and the women they had loved. They told me that someday I would marry a mighty warrior whose deeds would make me and my children proud and happy. Memory, that enemy who inflicted pain, dwindled slowly to a tiny whisper and finally vanished in my new Seneca self.
    For years I accepted my mother’s assurance that my white parents had died of sickness while journeying through the country of the Senecas and the Master of Life, the being who presided over the world, had sent a hunting party to discover me before I starved to death. How many times did I lift my eyes heavenward and thank the Master of Life for granting me the privilege of becoming a member of the Seneca tribe of the great league of the Iroquois!
    Only in the last year, as I passed from girlhood to womanhood, did I begin to realize that my white skin and blond hair made me different from the other young women in the village—different in a way that hurt and wounded, and stirred vague fragments of memory in my soul. On this particular morning of my twelfth year as a Seneca, I was having a dream that reflected these feelings. I dreamed I was presiding over a great feast. Many warriors were there, and many women. I was serving them venison and trout, corn cakes and squash. They saluted me with shouts and chants.
    I awoke and lay quietly, thinking of the dream. So much food! But in my waking belly, hunger prowled. Yesterday I had eaten nothing but a few mouthfuls of parched corn. The day before I had eaten nothing at all.
    My mother’s hand shook my shoulder. “Wake up,” she said. “We have something to eat. Your friend Nothing-But-Flowers has left us a bushel of corn.”
    With a cry of joy, I flung aside my bearskin blanket. It was not the first time Nothing-But-Flowers had saved us from starvation. As my mother combed out my long blond hair and tied it in two plaits down my back, I told her about my dream. My mother excitedly summoned Grandmother to interpret it for us.
    Grandmother’s wrinkled face glowed with delight. “It can only mean one thing—a marriage! She-Is-Alert will soon find a husband.”
    My mother struggled to believe Grandmother. She was famous for her skill in understanding dreams. Only the village shaman 1 had greater powers. But my mother had begun to think her white daughter would never find a husband. The young warriors called me the Moon Woman. They
said it would be like marrying a ghost. In the dark my white skin and yellow hair would make their flesh freeze. What if I had white children? What good would they be in a night attack? They would have to stain their bodies with the juice of whole baskets of berries each time they went to war.
    Grandmother insisted her understanding of the dream was correct. “Before the next snow, She-Is-Alert will meet the warrior she will marry! Perhaps he will be a visitor from another tribe. Many warriors want to join the Iroquois, who rule the land from the shores of this mighty lake south to the great ocean.”
    Grandmother was always boasting of the power and greatness of the Iroquois. They were On-gweh On-weh —“real people.” Everyone else was a poor imitation. Her pride in the Iroquois was her consolation as she faced old age with only her daughter