He had never seen her look so weary. She finally spoke. “But you have blunted your feelings.”

“And you have never blunted yours? But yes. I will not cover up my excesses. However, I was born into those times to be a warrior and a fast runner. The Great Spirit knows this.”

He considered his hands for a moment and then told his wife that he did not wish her pain, that she should perhaps watch the games no more, that in general perhaps she watched things too closely and that it was not bad, at times, to turn her head.

Mary lifted her chin. “Only I can decide when to turn my head and when not to turn from these things.”

In this manner, they partly understood each other.

From this and other events I learned that words, love them as I did, would not protect me from feelings. Once I had seen a three-legged doe stumbling, trying to make its way across a clearing. Words would not protect me from revisitings of the three-legged doe whose name was Doubt.

IN A short time it appeared that the ritual games and practices might serve the ends of actual war once again. At the council at the German Flats the American colonists told the Six Nations that they were resolved to press their grievances with the King of England. They did not ask the Iroquois to help them but asked them only what they would do should the colonists reach the snapping point with the British.

The Six Nations conferred. Then the Oneida chief as spokesperson reported that if a war should break out they would not take up the tomahawk and the scalping knife against either side.

THE RAIN, soft and warm, was nonetheless steady. Hiokatoo paused just inside the hut door and listened to his wife, who was sitting with the children.

“And then the mud-turtle accepted the pregnant young woman who had fallen from the sky onto his back. In the days that followed, he allowed the birds and other creatures to bring seeds, saplings, and ripped-up pieces of earth and to plaster these things on his back. The mud-turtle grew larger and larger.

“After a great deal of swimming, the mud-turtle spoke and said to the Good Spirit: ‘I feel the world on my back wobbling a little. I am afraid. It will take much concentration and care on my part to keep things in balance. No longer may I be heedless; no longer may I swim recklessly and play at will, risk bumping into shoals and whales, make sudden jerking movements.’

“But the Good Spirit spoke and said to the turtle: ‘Of course. What do you expect, being honored as the bearer of the world into the future of its men and women? Did you expect the young earth on your back not to wobble from time to time? I tell you that it is the condition of all things in this present life, of all creatures that creep and crawl, of all women, of all men, of all children, to wobble.’ ”