Cautiously, Kodjeote drew back the hide, revealing the weapons. He ran his hand across the hatchet blade, tracing the pitted metal with his fingertips. The grip, bound with rawhide, was blackened by age and wear. His eye moved to the war club, its stock worn smooth with use. What must it be like to wield such a weapon in anger? By the time the old man was his age, Kodjeote thought enviously, he was already a seasoned warrior, fighting for the King across the Great Water against a mutual foe – les français. Twenty years later, he had taken up his hatchet and war club for another English king, this time against the Yan-kees.

But the British had lost that war and their Iroquois allies had been driven out of their traditional strongholds into smaller land tracts, the Nations reduced to little more than a disparate collection of nomads.

Nearly two decades had passed since the Kanien’kehá:ka last took to the war path. As he listened to his father and uncle, and the other older men sitting around the council fires, trading stories of brave deeds and battles fought and of scalps taken, Kodjeote was filled with envy. But it would not be long before they, too, were called to take the spirit world path. Soon, Kodjeote thought sadly, there will be no more warriors save for those mentioned in stories around the camp fires. By the time my children’s children are born, there will only be half-forgotten memories and graves filled with dry bones and dust.

He moved his hand from the war club and laid his palm gently upon the blanket above his grandfather’s chest. It was the custom to talk to the dead; to gaze upon them one last time and to tell them they were not forgotten.

Kodjeote wanted to tell the old man how much he missed him and to ask forgiveness for disturbing his final rest. He took a deep breath and then hesitated. He did not know how to begin. He thought then about Cageaga’s comment and wondered if anyone in the tribe had said a Christian prayer over his grandfather’s remains. Those who followed the long-house teachings believed that no white man could enter the sky world. It made Kodjeote wonder if that meant a chief of the Kanien’kehá:ka was unable to enter the white man’s heaven.

What if, despite his uncle’s scepticism, the Catholic fathers were right and the true Creator was not the Great Spirit but the white man’s god? That would mean the only afterworld was the one promised by the white man’s deity. If that was so, in order for his grandfather to gain admittance, should not a white man’s prayer be spoken over him?