The Year of Rice and Salt

'Each new chief is allowed to ask the council of sachems, gathered to honour his raising up, consideration of some point of policy. I now ask the sachems to look at the matter of the foreigners on the cast coast, and at opposing them, by harnessing river power, and making guns, and pursuing a general campaign against them. I ask the sachems to pursue our own power over our affairs.'

He put his hands together and bowed.

The sachems stood.

Keeper said, 'That is more than one proposal. But we will take the first one into consideration, and that will cover the rest.'

The sachems gathered in small bunches and began to confer, Pounds the Rock talking fast as always, making a case for Fromwest, Iagogeh could tell.

All of them are required to be of one mind in decisions like this. The sachems of each nation divide into classes of two or three men each, and these talk in low voices to each other, very concentrated on each other. When they decide the view their class will take, one of them joins representatives from the other classes in their nation four for the Doorkeepers and the Swampers. These also confer for a while, while the sachems finished with their work consult with the pipe. Soon one sachem from each nation expresses that view to the other eight, and they see where they stand.

On this night, the conference of the eight representatives went on for a long time, so long that people began to look at them curiously. A few years before, when conferring over how to deal with the foreigners on the east coast, they had not been able to come to a unanimous view, and nothing then had been done. By accident or design, Fromwest had brought up again one of the most important and unresolved problems of their time.

Now it was somewhat similar. Keeper called a halt to the conference, and announced to the people, 'The sachems will meet again in the morning. The matter before them is too large to conclude tonight, and we don't want to delay the dancing any longer.'

This met with general approval. Fromwest bowed deeply to the sachems, and joined the first knot of dancers, who led with the turtleshell rattles. He took a rattle and shook it vigorously side to side, as oddly as he had swung his lacrosse bat. There was a fluid quality to his moves, very unlike the Hodenosaunee warriors' dancing, which looked something like attacks with tomahawks, extremely agile and energetic, leaping up into the air over and over, singing all the while. A sheen of sweat quickly covered their bodies, and their singing was punctuated by hard sucks for air. Fromwest regarded these gyrations with an admiring grin, shaking his head to indicate how beyond his abilities these dancers were; and the crowd, pleased that there was something he was not good at, laughed and joined in the dance. Fromwest shuffled to the back, dancing with the women, like the women, and the string of dancers went around the fire, around the lacrosse field, and back to the fire. Fromwest stepped out of the snake, and took ground tobacco leaves from his pouch and placed a small amount on the tongue of each passer by, including Iagogeh and all the dancing women, whose graceful shuffling would long outlast the leaping warriors. 'Shaman's tobacco,' he explained to each person. 'Shaman gift, for dancing.' It had a bitter taste, and many drank some maple water afterwards to dispel it. The young men and women continued dancing, their limbs blurring in the bonfire's light, more robust and burnished than before. The rest of the crowd, younger or older, danced slightly in place as they wandered, talking over the events of the day. Many gathered around those who were inspecting Fromwest's lacrosse ball map of the world, which seemed to glow in the firelit night as if burning a little at its heart.

'Fromwest,' Iagogeh said after a while, 'what was in that shaman tobacco?'

Fromwest said, 'I lived with a nation to the west who gave it to me. Tonight of all nights the Hodenosaunee need to take a vision quest together. A spirit voyage, as it always is. This time all out of the long house together.'

He took up a flute given to him, and put his fingers carefully on the stops, then played a sequence of notes, then a scale. 'Ha!' he said, and looked closely at it. 'Our holes are set in different places! I'll try anyway.'

He played a song so piercing they were all dancing on the sound of it together, like birds. Fromwest winced as he played, until at last his face grew peaceful, and he played reconciled to the new scale.

When he was done he looked again at the flute. 'That was "Sakura",' he said. 'The holes for "Sakura", but it came out something else. No doubt everything I say to you comes out changed in a similar fashion. And your children will take what you do and change it yet again. So it will not matter much what I say tonight, or you do tomorrow.'