The Year of Rice and Salt

He went into a description of this process that appeared to be mostly in his own language. The something did something to the something. He illustrated by blowing on a glowing branch end held before his mouth, till it burst back into yellow flame.

'Bellows are like deerskin bags, squeezed over and over in wooden hands, wooden walls on a hinge,' flapping his hands vigorously. 'The devices can be pushed by the river. All work can be linked to the power of the rivers flowing by, and greatly increased. Thus the river's power becomes yours. Niagara's power becomes yours to command. You can make metal discs with toothed edges, connect them to the river, and cut through trees like sticks, cut trees longways into planks for houses and boats.' He gestured around them. 'A forest covers the whole eastern half of Turtle Island. Numberless trees. You could make anything. Great ships to cross the great seas, to bring the fight to their shores. Anything. You could sail there and ask their people if they want to be slaves of an empire, or a tribe woven into the league. Anything!'

Fromwest paused for another toke on the pipe. Keeper of the Wampum took the opportunity to say, 'You speak always of struggle and fighting. But the foreigners on the coast have been most friendly and solicitous. They trade, they give us guns for furs, they do not shoot us, or fear us. They speak of their god as if it is none of our concern.'

Fromwest nodded. 'So it will be, until you look around you, and find there are foreigners all around you, in your valleys, in forts on your hilltops, and insisting that they own the land of their farm as if it were their tobacco pouch, and willing to shoot anyone who kills an animal there, or cuts a tree. And at that point they will say their law rules your law, because there are more of them and they have more guns. And they will have permanently armed warriors, ready to go on the warpath for them anywhere in the whole world. And then you will be running north to try to escape them, leaving this land here, the highest land on Earth.'

He wiggled upwards to show how high. Many laughed despite their consternation. They had watched him take three or four giant pulls on the pipe, and they had all taken a puff themselves by now, so they knew how high he must be feeling. He was leaving them now, they could see it. He began to speak as from a great distance away, from inside his spirit, or out among the stars.

'They will bring disease. Many of you will die of fevers, and infections coming as if from nowhere, spreading from person to person. The diseases eat you from within, like mistletoe, growing everywhere inside you. Tiny parasites inside you, big parasites outside you, people living from your work even though they stay on the other side of the world, making you do it by the force of laws and guns. Laws like mistletoe! There to support the luxuries of an emperor around the world. So many of them that they will be able to cut down all the trees in the forest.'

He took a deep breath, and shook his head like a dog to get out of that dark place.

'Well!' he cried. 'So! You must live as if you are already dead! Live as if you are warriors already captured, do you understand? The foreigners on the coast must be resisted, and confined to a harbour town, if you can do it. War will come eventually, no matter what you do. But the later it comes the more you can prepare for it, and hope to win it. Defending a home is easier than conquering the other side of the world, after all. So we might succeed! Certainly we must try, for all the generations that come after us!'

Another long inhalation on the pipe.

'Therefore, guns! Guns big and small! Gunpowder. Sawmills. Horses. With these things alone, we could do it. And messages on birchbark. A particular mark for each sound in the languages. Make the mark, make the sound. Easy. So talk like this can go on all the time, at great distances in space and time, between speakers and listeners. These things are being done all over the other side of the world. Listen, your island is isolated from the other by such great seas, that you have been as on another world, all the ages since the Great Spirit made people. But now the others are coming here! To resist them you have only your understanding, your spirit, your courage, and the arrangement of your nation, like the warp and weft of your baskets, so much stronger than any mere gathering of reeds. Stronger than guns!'

Suddenly he looked up and shouted it to the eastern stars. 'Stronger than guns!' To the western stars: 'Stronger than guns!' To the northern stars: 'Stronger than guns!' To the southern stars: 'Stronger than guns!'

Many cried out with him.

He waited for silence again.