She looked around the circle when she finished but could tell nothing from the daubed faces. Only the eyes of the young Indian who had the curly maple rifle looked thoughtfully at her. Now all withdrew by the creek for council. It did not take long. Returning, they stood in silence looking at her. After a while the Indian with the broad nose and bitter eyes spoke.

“Ochqueu, woman. We have heard you. You speak true enough about the small white sister. She insults us by crying at our companionship. She rejects us when we try to teach her the good life of the Indian. I think she will not breathe long. But that does not mean we are willing to see her go back. We will never return her to her white people.”

He paused in the Indian fashion for his words to sink in and his eyes took on that strange delirious out-of-focus look she had seen in many warriors. He went on.

“Woman. You have lived too long among the Yengwes. An Indian would not ask such an unheard-of thing. Warriors do not make pacts with women. We are not children. If we let you take her home, how do we know you would keep your promise and return to us? You speak fine words. So does the little singing bird before he flies away and is never seen again. Woman. If we keep you here as hostage and send warriors with the child, the white man will kill them. His promise is like dead wood.”

He picked up a dry stick, broke it between his fingers, and went on.

“Woman. Once the Indian listened to the white man. When the white man first came our fathers welcomed him. The white man said he wanted a little ground no bigger than a deer hide. He wanted to raise greens for his soup. The Indian gave him the ground. Then the white man put guns on it and made a fence around it so the Indian could not come in. The Indian was a child. He did not know the white man. He would not listen to the warnings of his prophets. Now the Indian knows. You see me standing here. I myself know the white man. As a boy the country around this place was my home. The land was Lenape land. My father’s village stood near where the creek and river join. On the island in the river my father and his brothers raised corn and squash. All summer canoes would leap from the shore to the island and canoes from the island to our village on the land. At night our campfires burned on the island and the land. Our children played. Our old men dozed. The smoke from our village went straight up to the Great Spirit.”

He halted again and the curious Indian ether leaped from his eyes.

“Young woman. Then the white man came. The Indian was driven off like cattle from his own land. He was pushed toward the setting sun. He took what he could with him, but he could not take the graves of his fathers. In the Pawpawing days some of us went back on pilgrimage looking for those graves. We could not find them. The white man had cut down the trees that waved over them. He had thrown away the rocks and logs laid against wolves and wolverines. He had plowed the bones to raise corn. Now you ask us to do favor to the white man who defiled our fathers’ graves. You ask us to give his badly raised child back to him. Why should we do such a thing? It is better we should give him back the parings of his daughter’s scalp. It is not wise to let such a white child grow up and bear children cowardly as she.”