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Onakara declined to acco to increase my confidence in our prospects Jaood knife, and a flask of whisky in payment for his services

We buried the rest of the whisky, hiding it carefully soe

"Will they understand ant?" I asked, as we reh to Mohawk for us to talk to them?"

"It’s no quite the sahtly, and the flakes clungto his eyelashes "Like the differences between Italian and Spanish, maybe But Onakara says that the sacheh they ht with the English against the French; there will be some who ken it"

"Well, then" Jamie smiled at us and laid his o and try our luck"

54

CAPTIVITY I

February 1770

He had been in the Mohawk village nearly threeAt first he had not knoho they were; only that they were a different kind of Indian than his captors--and that his captors were afraid of them

He had stood nuht him talked and pointed The new Indians were different; they were dressed for the cold, in fur and leather, and many of the men’s faces were tattooed

One of them prodded him with the point of a knife, and made him undress He was forced to stand nakd in thewooden house while several ht foot was badly swollen; the deep cut had become infected He could still walk, but each step sent jabs of pain through his leg, and he burned inter him to the door of the house There was a lot of noise outside He recognized the gauntlet; a double row of shouting savages, all armed with sticks and clubs Someone behind poked him in the buttock with the point of a knife, and he felt a war "Cours!" they said Run

The ground was trarimy ice It burned his feet as a shove in his back sent hihtone way, then another, as the clubs struck his and back There was no way to avoid the blows All he could do was keep going, as fast as possible

Close to the end, a club swung straight and took him hard across the belly; he doubled over and another swatted him behind the ear He rolled bonelessly into the snow, barely feeling the cold on his broken skin

A switch stung his legs, then lashed his up in reflex, rolled again, and found hi, the blood fro with the frozen ing on his back, grasped the poles of a longhouse and pulled hi on to the poles to keep froh-pitched yips that htened up, head whirling They laughed harder He’d always kno to please a crowd

They took hiave hied shirt and filthy breeches, but not his coat or shoes It ar at intervals down the length of the long structure, each with its own open smokehole above He crawled into a corner and fell asleep, his hand on the lumpy seam of his breeches

After this reception, the Mohawk treated hireat cruelty He was the slave of the longhouse, at the use of anyone who lived there If he did not understand an order, they would show him--once If he refused or pretended not to understand, they beat him, and he refused no iven a decent place to sleep, at the end of the house

As it inter, the h now and then a hunting party would take hi reat effort to co he acquired a little of the language

He began, with great caution, to try a feords He chose a young girl to begin with, feeling her less dangerous She stared at hihted as if she had heard a crow talk She called a friend to come and hear, and another, and the three of the softly behind their hands and looking sideways at him from the corners of their eyes He said all the words he knew, pointing at the objects--fire, pot, blanket, corn--then pointed at a string of dried fish overhead and raised his eyebrows

"Yona’kensyonk," said his new friend proled when he repeated it Over the next days and weeks, the girls taught hireat deal; it was from them that he finally learned where he was Or not where, precisely, but in whose hands

They were Kahnyen’kehaka, they told him proudly, with looks of surprise that he did not know that Mohawk Keepers of the Eastern Gate of the Iroquois League He, on the other hand, was Kakonhoaerhas It took a certain a of this tered in a face"