Iona Fuller 1940
Set in the 1800s at Mackinac Island, my most cherished place in Michigan, this historical fiction is extraordinary, written in unpretentious lyrical prose. It is a heart-warming portrayal of Native American Oneta born to Shawnee hero Tecumseh who dies soon after her birth. Her mother remarries Pierre Debans, a French fur trader and later dies. She is then sent to a convent school in Quebec for twelve years. She returns and finds the Island and herself at a crossroads between the old of her Indian heritage and the threat of the new 'White' ways. A possible Indian revolt against Pierre and meeting Martin, a doctor from Boston made her finally see her chosen path. I savored this book and did not want it to end.
'It was fur that made our lives what they were. Fur, and the people who lived by it. The earliest memories of my life are of soft deerskin clothing and warm fur robes that kept me as comfortable in winter as the bear in his cave.' (opening lines)
'Furs were the means of getting whatever the Indian and the white trapper wanted, for in those days they were the legal tender and there was little that prime beaver would not buy.'(4)
'And there was always the water, for Mackinac is where the lakes meet, in the straits flowing between Lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior. Pierre read from a book once about "seas of sweet water," and that was what we had on every side and in every direction, pure, beautifully colored, yet transparent almost as the air itself.(5)
'I wish I could remember my father from the first time he came back from the border war after I was born. I wish I could remember more clearly those heavily arched brows above black, penetrating eyes that no one failed to notice, the face grave and noble, and full of courage, almost sad in wisdom.'(24)
'I am afraid I remember little about the school except the daily ride behind the dog team, scooting over the ground behind furry leaping creatures, up and down hill between snow-laden trees. The most important thing the school did for me was not intended for me at all, and often I think that may be true of teaching. For who knows what the mind of a child may take up?(34)
'It is well to die as one has lived, not in strange things put upon you by other men...'(55)
'Sometimes on the straits, when the sun warms the air, and the water is clear and blue as the sky, a strange thing happens. There is no change of wind, nor any more wind. But suddenly a high wave forms in the center, and moves rapidly across to the island. It breaks there, high on the beach, almost putting out the first row of fires. Then it is gone. No cause is visible, yet it has formed and disappeared, leaving the water as smooth as before. Thus, among his people, was the life on my father.'(56)
'When the robin's song is a laughing one, there will be peace and enough to eat. When it is harsh, there will be war and trouble. The robin is a young girl of our tribe who died from too long fasting. She asked that her spirit might go into a bird, and that she might come back to her people every spring and tell them what the year would hold. She painted her breast red as a promise that she would always come, and that we may know her.'(96)
'But about the loon-- you know, but he's a funny bird. He's a lonesome, a melancholy bird, but he's got a lot of sense. We can learn something from him. The way he's made, he can't walk much, so he don't get out on land-- you never seen one on land, did you?-- He don't get out of the water unless he has to. A lesson to some of us to stay where we're meant to be.'(98)
"That is our custom," I said. "If Mother hadn't had a husband before, if she was living with her father, you would bring him presents. But my mother has had one husband. So you should bring some meat to her door. If she takes it in, you can come in to stay."(120)
'It was the only way to decide a thing rightly. Mother had told me of other times she had fasted and waited for a dream, beginning with the first one when she was just entering womanhood. That was the most important dream.'(124)
"Remember, Oneta, that your father was the greatest of his race since Pontiac, and many say even greater than he. Remember in your trouble now that he was always alone, even as you feel alone now. Honored as he was by so many, your father was even more alone than you. And yet-- he was not alone."(185)
"Once," Martha began at last, "I sat on the edge of a council with the general they called Harrison, and heard Tecumseh say these words,
It is true that I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them I take only my existence; from my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own fortune. I have a voice within me, communing with past ages... The sun is my father, the earth is my mother."(186)
'For the first time, I saw how easy-going the cabin life had been. I felt like a keg that had drifted down a peaceful river, at once caught in a whirlpool and sent around in a basin for weeks, sometimes descending to rise again and make the same dizzy circuit. Madame had scolded when I made mistakes, but when I got used to her ways, her chiding hurt no more than the nibble of little fishes when one stands with bare legs in the water.'(210)
'Saints were ever less to me than the many spirits of trees and rocks and streams. When the priest spoke of eternity as going on forever, the picture of the endlessly rolling, tumbling waters of the straits went through my mind. The music of the choirs, the chanting of the mass, only made more vivid the sound of the waters in the straits, the quietly dripping springs, the wind and rain of autumn storms... Among the organ notes deep and high came disturbing notes of other music-- thin notes of a wooden flute, the beating of hands on a skin drawn tight over a piece of hollow log set in earth, boat songs, and even the endless scraping of fiddle strings. It was as if I were using these things as a barrier to something trying to crush me, as though if I ceased to be myself I should not live.'(229)
'Sharp edges of stones gnashed under Pierre's shoes as he turned and went up the slope of the beach. Unlike moccasins that would have let him feel the little ridges and hollows, his stout leather shoes leveled the path and kept him knowing it was rough. As I watched him go, the same thought came that I had the first time I ever saw him-- what was he doing here? He looked more than ever like one just alighted from a boat for a brief look at the island.(367)
'I walked slowly westward down the beach, marveling, for directly came upon me the thought that while I had tried to help Jacques endure what must be, Martin had helped him get what he wanted. I wondered if I had not stumbled on a wider thought, that behind it was one difference between my race and his. Indians were ever better at renunciation than the white man. I wondered too, as I walked, how he had come to know the heart of Rosanne better than Jacques and I, who had see n her grow up.'(382)
'To the careless eyes of a new voyageur, I was only an Indian girl. Lying there, I realized how far I had gone in building on the knowledge I had gained from books, on the fine clothing I had, on the feeling that I was as good as anyone on the island. Abjectly I faced for the first time the meaning of this truth. I was of my tribe. All the years at the convent and in Grand'mere's home were as nothing.(404)
'I felt a new stir of life along my veins, as words of Marthe's, said in my childhood, sounded clear in my thoughts. "You are all there is of Tecumseh remaining on this earth." I sat up, a new excitement running through me, a quiver of pride such as I had not felt for many years. I was Tecumseh's daughter! All things that had troubled me had come because I had forgotten who I was,'(409)
'I looked away across the island, over the tops of the little trees. The wind was murmuring in the balsams, and like a voice down the long waves of time I seemed to hear the words, said long ago over a new baby girl, "You will bring to your people a man who is greater than a warrior."(454)
'I look back at that day through the happiness of years, so I may be remembering it in greater beauty than was there, just as it is in the air between and not the far-off ridge that has the delicate blue. Out of the happiness of those years has come a rich deepening of the truth I felt that day, that when there is likeness of spirit, two people are of one kind. And if there is not likeness, the two are divided by something even greater that the accident of race.'(456)
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a Harvest book Harcourt edition
456 pages
Book owned
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Personal note: Bought this as souvenir book from the Island Book store Under the Lilac Tree Hotel, Mackinac Island, July 15,2010.
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