into my hands and turned away, as if to leave.
“Wait!” I said. “I have another book. My own book. You can have that.” My catechism, which I had by heart. “It is a more powerful book than this one. You would call it filled with manit. I will fetch it hither. And if you wish to learn your letters, you should know that my father teaches this to the praying Indians and to their children. I am sure he would be glad for you to join the lessons.” Father had, with the help of Peter Folger, established the day school in the winter of 1652. He was talking now of building a schoolhouse, which would be the first such on the island. I had been filled with envy, when I heard him speak of it, for there was not even a dame school for the English. Parents schooled their own children or not, as they chose. “Iacoomis also teaches there. His son Joel, who is junior to you, already knows his letters. . . .”
He frowned, and made a snort of disgust. “Iacoomis has nothing to teach me, and neither will I sit down with his son who has walked with the English all his life.”
“Why do you say so?” “Iacoomis was nothing. His own people cast him out. Now, since he walked with the Coatmen and learned your God, this man who could barely pull a bowstring speaks as if he were a pawaaw. He walks tall now, and says his one God is stronger than our many, and foolish men listen, and are drawn away from their sonquems and from their families. It brings no good to us, walking with Coatmen.”
“You say so, and yet you walk with me,” I said quietly. He had pulled a bough from a nearby tree and was stripping the bark roughly. He lifted the bare stick and sighted along it, to see if it might make an arrow, then thrust it away.
“Why do you not ask your father, Nah noso?” I said. “As sonquem, he might welcome it, if you told him you wished to learn your letters so as to safekeep the knowledge of your people.” I swallowed hard, knowing the freight of what I was about to say. “You say you aspire to be pawaaw— does not a pawaaw seek familiarity with every god? If so, then why not the English God as well?” I was not so lost, then, that I was deaf to the heresy I had just uttered. I formed a silent prayer for forgiveness.
His brown eyes regarded me fiercely. “My father forbids it. And my uncle hates those who listen to the English. But since, as you say, I do walk with you, Storm Eyes, you might teach me this book of yours, and so get for me this manit that you say comes from your one God.”
I should not have been my father’s daughter if those words had failed to open to me the possibility that before me stood a brand needing to be plucked from the fire. For if I taught him to read from the pages of the catechism . . .
I might— I should— have echoed him back at once: “My father forbids it.” It had been instilled in me often enough that preaching was not women’s work. No woman was to think of giving prophecy in meeting, though any unlettered cowcatcher might exercise his gifts there, so long as he be a man. A woman might not even ask a question in meeting, if some matter was obscure to her. I had been instructed to ask at home, privily, if I needed scriptural guidance.
And yet how could I turn my back on a soul that might be saved? Had not everything in my life inclined to teach me that this, of all good works, was the highest and best of all? Perhaps, I thought, if I could teach this boy— son of a chief, apprentice to a wizard— bring him to father as a convert, versed in scripture— father might see the worth in me, and consent to instruct me again, in those higher learnings that he labored over with my dull-witted brother.
And so I commenced that very day to teach Caleb his letters: “A,” I said, tracing the shape in the wet sand. “It has two sounds. Remember them thusly: ‘Adam ate the apple.’ ” At once there was a difficulty: he had never seen an apple. I promised to bring him one from our small orchard, which father planted when first he came here. But this snag was nought to the briars yet to ensnare us.
I commenced to introduce Adam to him, to describe the garden and the fall, and how that first sin comes down to besmirch all of us. I had then to explain sin, of which he had no ready concept. He would not concede that he had ever sinned himself, and seemed much offended when I assured him of it. His brow drew itself heavier and heavier, until he waved a hand as if sweeping away noxious smoke. “Your story is foolishness. Why should a father make a garden for his children and then forbid them its fruit? Our god of the southwest, Kiehtan, made the beans and corn, but he rejoiced for us to have them. And in any wise, even if this man Adam and his squa displeased your God, why should he be angry with me for it, who knew not of it until today?”
I had no answer. I felt rebuked for my pride. Clearly this undertaking would be harder than I had reckoned. My father must truly be a marvelous preacher if he had to answer such as this. I resolved to go with father when next he visited a Wampanoag otan. I would listen to him sermonize, to find out if his flock had so many vexing questions, and if so, how he answered them. I realized I should have to devise a pretext for this, since father was unaware I knew the Indians’ language and would think I understood nothing of what passed between him and his listeners. So, at home, I began to hint that I had a curiosity to see how they arranged an otan, to visit the wetus and to meet the squas who lived in them (which was no more than the truth). After a time, I asked father if I might go with him, the next time he had a mind to it. He seemed pleased by my interest, and said he could see no harm if mother could spare me from chores. “For they hold family very dear, and count it a slight that we English do not foster more ties of affection between our families and their own.”
A few days later, we went together on Speckle, and as we approached the settlement, we dismounted and walked so that father could greet everyone and tell them that he proposed to preach to them when the sun was at its highest. The praying village was for those who had been convinced by my father to embrace Christianity, and was called Manitouwatootan, or God’s Town. Despite its godly name, father worried that the old ways still had a strong hold there, and that the people remained confused about the truth of Christian teaching. Some families who had removed there remained divided between the convinced and those who were not ready to yield the old ways. Some were conflicted in their own hearts, halting between two opinions. Some came only to see and hear what was done, yet though they heard the word of the one God of heaven, remained thralls to sin and darkness. “They say that their meetings and customs are much more agreeable and advantageous than ours, in which we do nothing but talk and pray, while they dance and feast and give gifts one to the other. I try, Bethia, to explain that this is the way of the Great Deluder, Satan. But I have found no words in their language to answer our English words— faith, repentance, grace, sanctification. . . . Well, you will see for yourself, soon enough, how it is. . . .”
The first thing that struck me was the peace of the place. In Great Harbor, on every day except the Sabbath, there is noise from first light to last light. Someone is always splitting a shingle, hammering a nail into the latest new dwelling or enlarging an existing one. The smith’s mallet rings from the forge, the pounders hammer at the fulling mill and the stone mason worries at his rocks with all manner of iron tools. There was no such English factory evident here.
The squas were in the gardens, weeding with hoes made of clam-shells. In truth, they had little to weed, for the planting was contrived cunningly, with beans climbing up the cornstalks and the ground between each hillock covered in leafy squash vines that left scant room for weeds to grow. The menfolk were about the wetus, some casting jacks in a game of chance, others lying idle upon their mats. I saw father draw his brows at this. I had heard him opine that too much toil fell to the women. It was they who tilled the soil, ground the corn, foraged for wild foods, made the mats for the shelters and the baskets for the stores, and bent their backs under loads of wood for the cook fires. The men, warriors and hunters, had little to do in the way of daily drudge-work. “Of course, you should know that bow hunting is no lordly game such as an English shooting party might make of it, Bethia. It is a wearying endeavor, without beaters to drive and game-keepers to ensure the quarry. Still, I think the men might do more to lessen the women’s burdens.”
