The council circle could hear behind them some murmurs of admiration and approval from their people. A few came forward to look more closely at the pledge-bundle.

In the end, the Six Nations agreed to aid the British.

“THEY know better.”

Hiokatoo had been raising a piece of bread to his mouth, but he stopped his hand in midair and looked at his wife.

“How could this have happened? Earlier we made a treaty that said we would not take up with either side. How could you let this happen? Why did you not speak? I should have spoken.”

Hiokatoo’s jaw moved to one side; he laid the piece of bread on their eating-mat before he answered. “Many of our people believed the promise that their future would be secure from want.”

“They know better.”

Hiokatoo turned as if to let her anger slide past him. He raised his eyebrows, but his wife did not take the warning.

“You must not have heard correctly. Our people would never have done this.”

In response her husband placed his hand back on his bread and then asked Mary a question. “Who are you talking to?”

“Who am I talking to?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who are you talking to? To yourself? To someone else who is not present in this room? I am your husband and a Seneca. Are you saying that you know the Seneca better than I do?”

THE FOLLOWING May the Seneca fought their first battle with the colonists. That year Mary saw many white prisoners, but a day came when a war party entered the village and brought one of the strangest of them all—a man dignified and bearded. He was in the company of three white women and several children.

He conveyed a singular sense of evenness, of a steady and sure and unnatural presence under the pressure of captivity. The look he gave me as he passed was frank if not bold. He nodded to me and smiled, and the smile was of an assured and at once intimate and invasive nature.

He did not speak, but it was as if he had. It was as if he was saying that he would take care of me, that I should make some kind of arrangement to spend time with him.

BEFORE the prisoners were led off, the leader of the war party spoke to the chief’s son and said that the prisoner was Joseph Smith. And he said that the others were rumored to be Joseph Smith’s disciples.

IN THE center of a cornfield, a flame was laid to a dry cornstalk. And then other flames were laid to the field’s four corners.

This was the beginning of the colonial Sullivan expedition, and the rebels’ path led through Genesee, where the Seneca had gone over to the British. Field after field flamed up, and axes were put to the trunks of the apple and cherry trees.