Remember the Morning Read Free Page B

and adopted granddaughter alive. Her husband and her two sons were dead, the husband killed in war with the Ottawas long ago, the sons in a white man’s plague, called measles, when they visited the French fort at the great falls of the Niagara River.
    I understood everything that passed between my mother and grandmother, both the spoken and the unspoken parts. I too had begun to think I would never find a husband in the village. My white skin and yellow hair were not the only problems. My grandmother and mother belonged to one of the lesser families in the Turtle Clan. They did not have the power to appoint and dismiss chiefs and sachems, like the matron of the clan. They were not consulted on great decisions of peace or war, of joining the French or the English.
    Next year, if I lacked a husband, I would probably become a hunting woman. That was a hard fate. Hunting women went into the winter woods with the warriors who traveled west to trap beaver and otter to sell to the English and French. A hunting woman cooked meals and dressed the skins and let the trappers take her when they felt the need for a woman. If she bore a child, she would never know who was the father. A hunting woman’s life was full of cold and sadness.
    I tried to put this evil thought out of my mind and waited patiently while my mother cooked the corn and pounded it into cakes. Then all the members of the other families in the longhouse were summoned to the feast. Fortunately there were no warriors—they were out hunting for the game that often mysteriously disappeared at this time of year, after the snows melted but before the first flowers of spring appeared. Even without the warriors, the basket of corn became only a single small cake for each person in the Turtle Clan. But it tasted wonderful. I hurried from the longhouse to thank my friend Nothing-But-Flowers.
    It was a beautiful day. The sun glistened from a blue sky on the wide waters of Lake Ontario. Several young women were trying to organize a
game of double ball—a sure sign that spring was on its way. My long legs and angular frame made me very good at this game, in which young women chased two deerskin pouches stuffed with feathers tied to a stick up and down the village street. It was a female version of lacrosse, the warlike game the young warriors played with ferocious frenzy.
    In double ball, each woman was armed with a stick that enabled her to whip the pouches twenty or thirty paces toward the goal. I loved to score goals. I had won many pairs of mooseskin moccasins and leggings as prizes. Unfortunately, my pugnacious style of play did not endear me to the other young women of the village.
    I found Nothing-But-Flowers sitting in front of the longhouse of the Bear Clan, her grandmother plaiting her gleaming black hair. Nothing-But-Flowers had painted several streaks of vermilion on her creamy brown face. Yes, she was my former playmate, Clara, but I had forgotten that name too. I asked her why she had painted her face. Nothing-But-Flowers explained that she had dreamed she would meet her husband today. I thanked her for the corn and decided not to mention my poor dream. Nothing-But-Flowers’s dream was so much better.
    Instead of desperately inspecting the whole village for a possible husband, Nothing-But-Flowers was allowing orenda, the spirit that pervaded all things, to search out the future for her. Everyone agreed that Nothing-But-Flowers’s personal orenda was very powerful. Her mother and grandmother had seen it the day they adopted her. That was why they had given her a name that predicted she would become a woman with both a beautiful body and a beautiful spirit.
    A tall thin young woman named Big Claws sidled up to us. She was one of the worst gossips in the village. “Why don’t you loan Moon Woman some vermilion?” she said. “She’d paint her whole face with it and maybe her cunt too but it wouldn’t do her any good. Do you