The larger canoe then headed out down the river by itself as the sisters ran their own boat aground, gestured to their passenger that she should remain, and made their way toward a cluster of elongated houses.

When they returned, they carried steaming cloths and a bundle of clothing and helped Mary out of the canoe. In the chill of the April night they undressed her, put aside her rags, and carefully washed her body.

A broadcloth petticoat came slipping over her head, the sudden warmth of it. And then more warmth—a long-sleeved flannel gown, a shirt that had neither collar nor sleeves. And deerskin strings everywhere—strings at her waist and strings to hold up the stockings which reached from her knees into the mouths of her buckskin moccasins. They finally placed a blanket around her shoulders.

Within the silent village, its people regarded the young white woman. The sisters signaled to her to enter one of the houses. Burning beneath a vent hole, a small fire wavered. In spite of herself, Mary coughed. One of the sisters motioned to her to sit down. The hut began filling with women.

As the captive sank to a sitting position, a woman began to sing. She sang of the dead, and in the moments when she paused to take breath, sighing sounds arose from the others.

The singer then looked purposefully at the two sisters and sang, with many short pauses, of their brother who had been recently killed by the whites:

Light Bear lay in a dusty field
staring up at a yellow sky
after a battle in Washington’s war.
He imagined his sisters,
the ones of the glossy hair
and the slender, strong arms;
he saw their old home
on the shining banks of the O-hi-o.

Thus Light Bear lay until a white
cut short his thoughts
by kicking our wounded brother
and crushing his rib box.

Then did this Seneca’s spirit
startle, then did it hastily
pack, then did it gather itself
to take leave of the body.
Then did that body sense
that soul’s withdrawal
such that it recoiled,
such that it started to wilt.

The jaw became fixed,
the limbs grew rigid
as sticks, a thumb
stopped twitching.

For all we know
the bones lie unburied—

Here the singer stopped because the women began to cry out. She waited for a time and then began again:

Light Bear had no comforts,
those objects of burial:

no candles for dusk,
no gleaming tomahawk
nor war suit of clothes,
no little cakes
nor arrows to show off
to friends in the afterlife.

We mourn for our brother,
we long for his presence.
But his drum-like voice
has been torn from us.

In his place sits this captive
of no little beauty.
Her nose is shaped
just the same as our Light Bear’s.
His sisters choose to adopt her
and call her their own.
May she be happy
as long as she lives.