THE JAGGED GREEN EDGE

A novel, by Matthew C. Novellino

Ch. 1 – The End of the World

Shawangunks, New York Province - July 22nd, 1755
Narrator: "Wix"

The full moon began to roll out over the ghost cliffs like an eagle’s egg predicting ruin to the small creatures of the field.  It vibrated uneasily against the electric-blue stillness of the dusk sky, and as the sun fled to safer lands in the west its warm red glow was wrestled into submission by the cold light of the rising white orb.

On many nights I’d known the moon’s company in hunting, in scouting, in praying my thanks to creation, but now it climbed over the quartzite massif of the Shawangunks like a skull.  It was Summer in 1755, and it was the end of the world. 

To the south lay the lands where I was born.  A country long called home by my Lunáapee people—but to the British, who were squeezing the last of us from those lush and sheltering hills, it was The Jerseys.  

For many years we had been friends with the British.  When they were weak, we guided them safely across our forests to the fields in Penn’s Colony which they loved so much, and we granted them peace to live there.  Even before the English set in their roots, my great-grandparents sheltered ocean travelers known as the Dutch, the Fins, and the Swedes; and while they fought amongst themselves we accepted many of their downtrodden to be our kin.

For eons before that, we had been known as the Grandfather Nation, and we were looked to as leaders in war and as brokers of peace—but now the Lunaapéewak broke and fled, and hate settled into our hearts like frost on a corpse.  As I watched the last blood red line of sunset, my eyes which had known eight-thousand peaceful days in the blue and green shades of the forest grew sharp like steel knives, and longed to rip and spill more warm red from the fabric of the night.  My people had broken, and it was the end of the world.        

In my twenty-two winters I’d never known the steady procession of the moon as an enemy before, but it was suddenly too crisp as it rose and cast its phantom luminosity over the earth.  I exhaled a puff of vapor before me to soften its edges into a mirage.  Atop the crystalline cliffs above me, black shapes appeared suddenly against the orb and lingered at the edge before the drop.  A chill rose up my body from deep in the stoney mantle of the earth.  All around me the pale boulders yearned skyward and worshiped towards the moon, and swam in my aura like spirits.  The familiar wet smell of leaf decay came to my nose, but instead of the comfort of the forest floor it tasted of the surrender of death.    

A stone myself, I fixed my eyes on the silhouettes above.  Carefully, I expelled my next breath so as not even to ripple the air between us.  The leader turned, his feet finding the easy purchase on the rocks that is gifted to the born killer.  Striding forward, he cast a glance down upon me.  Close on his heels his woman followed, and the rest of the pack emerged and fell-in along the ledge in a long line, moving in a single body like one of the black snakes which I knew slept in abundance beneath those stones.  

The moon had not yet rolled its way fully above the earth, and it hovered impossibly large against the outline of the cliff, making it seem as if the wolves had disembarked directly from its surface like some alien race.  The white light compelled the dark shapes forward on their hunt, but if they detected my scent on the air it neither drew them towards me nor pushed them away.  They knew that I was just a Lenape.  From the northernmost division of the Lenape Nation known as the Wolf Tribe—or more recently, the Munsee.  Our feet had marked the same soil in pursuit of meat and life since the time of legends, when the wolves themselves had first led us out from beneath the earth to prosper under the gaze of the open sky.  We would make unsavory quarry for one another if we forgot those bonds now, and so the pack trotted confidently away to wind down off a broken portion of the cliff carried on the scent of some prey.  Perhaps the moose who glided across the stone-chalice of a lake below the cliffs; trailing two silken strands of white through the dyed stillness of the water behind him.  

As the wolves passed from my sight I knew that blood would spill this night.  Bones would crack and give up their marrow.  Life would pass from one being to another.  

An east breeze rose against my skin, and it carried a faint scent of smoke.  Not the smell of limbs carefully selected by my people, but of large felled oak and chestnut half seasoned and split on steel mauls.  It tasted of the fires of the British belching from stone chimneys which had multiplied along the great Mahicantuck river in Hudson’s Valley below.  I beheld the ghost cliffs, glinting in the moonlight with flecks of quartz like earthbound stars.  This place had been a bastion during my boyhood, but even here I would find shelter no longer, and for that my ancestors cried at me in their silence.

Most of my people had already fled west, deep into Pennsylvania and the Ohio Country, seeking escape from the things which came so easily upon the open sea.  A year earlier, conflict had rekindled between the great sea powers of Britain and France.  As they grew in strength, our old British neighbors swindled our territory from us at every new turn, and some of my relatives upon the Ohio seemed ready to answer the rallying call of the French.  Half-a-moon earlier, a mighty British expedition had entered the west seeking French scalps, and the French Governor in Canada begged the Indian nations about the Ohio to intervene on their behalf.  When the forces met near the confluence of three great rivers the British were by far the larger, but luckily for the French, the far-Indians who had come with them decided they did not want to suffer so many English to be there that day, and the great Redcoats fell in the forest like so many naked babies.  Even then, most of the Lenape on the Ohio had not wanted to raise a hand against our old British brothers, and most of us chose only to wait and to watch.  That loyalty, however, was to no avail, for those few of us who remained east in the original Lenape country were being squeezed as if in the coils of a rat-snake.  

The moon levitated higher above the ghost cliffs, and I realized how much my heart had changed.  I’d recently decided that I would accept the hatchet so readily extended in the hand of the French King, and that I would take up his offer to fight.  Anything to punish the British who held my land in their palm and endeavored to crush my people.  Somewhere in my heart I still held a place for many of the British I had known, but like the wolves who were weaving down through the maze of rocks toward the pond, I would need to have blood.  Like them, I had tasted stone in every sip of water in my life, and so my path would not lead west to The Ohio, but north to the mountains of granite and quartz.  

I had been born among the nations of stone which composed the curve of the Appalachians.  The trails of wolves were woven into my subconscious, and the silhouettes of distant mountains beckoned my imagination.  Whenever wolves are hunted they seek the rocky heights and the craggy recesses, and I would do the same.  If I was to continue to know a free forest life then it seemed I must fight for the French, and if that was my path then I would do it with the tribes of the north. 

On the cliffs above the last wolf trotted out of view, and I slipped into the woods seeking out the dark spaces shaded from the skull gaze of the moon.  As I eased west away from the Hudson Valley and its chimneys, I kept to the rocks and trod the last bit of the long protective white cliffs of the Shawangunks.  Even as I put the cliffs behind me, giant pale boulders rose from out of the inky woods before me like centennials.  I greeted them with a nod and a silent word, hoping to keep their love and protection even as I abandoned them.  Niipáahum was rising higher now, and it seemed to animate the stones and give force to their life.  With each step my toes spread to grip the next patch of dirt, the next coarse or polished stone.  

Even though I stayed clear of the cabins where they clustered in the east, I knew that the children of the English king traveled farther into the woods now, and cut squares out of the forest to raise their homes, and their boots found nearly every path in my country.  I had to be careful.  Behind me there was a chorus of distant howls as the wolves discovered the trail of the moose where it made landfall.  I’d traveled north to the borders of Munsee country and beyond many times before.  Soon I’d draw near the territory of the Mohicans where it edged up against the Kaaterskill Mountains.  This time would be different though.  This time I may never return, and tears ran down my cheeks as if clawed from my eyes by the fingernails of my ancestors.  

The Mohicans were kin to the Lunaapéewak.  We knew and used each other’s lands, but I would not linger long in their territory.  The British had come to the Mahicantuck too.  They squeezed in from the east and south, and from the west the Mohicans were weighed upon by the Mohawk of the mighty Six-Nations League of the Iroquois.  The Mohawk were the easternmost of that league, and they were always on the move in the territories of their neighbors.  As the most loyal and powerful ally of the English, the Mohawks weighed heavily on my mind, for they sat like a monster on my path to the tribes of the north, to the French, and to freedom.

On the far side of the lake I crested a small ridge and emerged from the trees.   Behind me distant snarls gutted up through the rocks.  I knew the pack was trying to cut the moose away from the sanctuary of the water and its path to life.  Like the wolves, I was a hunter, but on this night I felt deep sympathy for their prey.  Not far away, the Kaaterskills rose from the lush forest in full view of the moon.  I was nearing the end of my world.  

—

The moon had traveled halfway across the sky before I realized that I was being followed.  Somewhere north of the ghost cliffs, the silent hunters cut my trail from the ethereal moonbeams which pooled like luminous liquid in the shallow impressions left by my moccasins.  I did my best to keep my progress in shadow, but where no light fell on my tracks the hunters felt them out with their toes, or discovered them in moist peat with deft fore-digits.  

Silent as a cloud stretching from a mountain pass, they glided and crouched along my back-trail as it skirted up through thick grown hollows, over ridges, and across creeks and streams that trickled down to the intervale between the Shawangunks and the Kaaterskills.  I knew they were there when a great horned owl mewed softly, singing an octave off of her usual hunting call.  I had become the moose, and the wolves were intent on my marrow.  

The depths of the night sat quiet with no wind, and I doubled my efforts to pass silently over the scattered twigs and dry leaves, while listening for any misstep from my pursuers.  Above me, the Milky Way penetrated the throbbing moonlight only weakly.  It was The Wolf Trail—one of the many things shown to us by the namesake of my tribe, and its million points were the procession of my people into the afterlife.   

The hunters were almost silent, but the occasional disturbance of forest litter, or the rousing of a sleeping bird in a rhododendron bush came to me as images come to the ears of a bat.  It painted a scene of what was materializing in the shadows behind me.  My pursuers had spread abreast of each other so that I could not slip past them with any of my usual tricks.  If I detoured over hard rock, or tried to dogleg up a stream, one of the trackers on the front would discover my trail where it rejoined the soil.  They had inherited the skills of the hunt the same as I.  In mimic of a pair of Kóokhoos probing for a mouse in the dark brush, they hooted softly to one another as they moved.  I felt the snare tighten.

All the days of my life I’d anointed the earth with the blood of the forest’s creatures which became my meals; always with a whispered prayer of thanks, and an understanding that my time would someday come.  Now I understood that this was the night that the drop which sanctified the ground would be formed by my blood, and that I would travel the path of the Milky Way before another sun was born. 

Just across a gully and past the crest of the rise behind me a voice hooted.  I turned with understanding.  Crouched.  Gripped my fingers deep into the dirt and felt the capillary roots of moss fall around my skin like shredded tobacco.  I could feel the hunters out there in the shadows of evergreen and leaf.  They paused as I paused.  They breathed in the air as I exhaled it.  They were linked to me by the fluid of moonlight which drew all things together in a web of singularity.  My breath was the same as the faint breeze that stirred the hemlock branch beside my head—its needles painting a black pattern on my face in the negative space of Niipáahum’s light.

Another hoot came from across the front, and the speaker dared a step forward.  My hatchet slid into my hand without a thought; the telltale glint of its carefully sharpened steel edge blackened down by a mixture of creamy fat and soot from the fire.  These men—Mohawks I supposed—knew how to track a Lenape.  That was as clear as the skull moon’s gaze.  If they knew how to track together, I thought, then they would know how to fight together as well.  

Cold tingles spread across my ribs.  I could feel flankers pressing silently forward through the shadows to close around me.  It’s what I would do.  Another hoot came from my left, and I almost marveled.  These hunter’s dreams must have brought them strong Manutóowak guides who were helping them pin me there in the dark.  It was admirable.  I was nearly hypnotized.

But wait.  The owl was my guardian too.  I’d dreamt of the Kóokhoos, with its orange harvest-moon eyes, in both sleep and waking.  Wasn’t it the one who’d warned me that I was being followed?  And this was still my land.  For generations this had been the territory of my ancient P’tucwsit tribe, and the Wolf animated me.  These rocks were my grandfathers, and the soil they sprang from composed the body of my grandmother.  A prickly heat of determination stirred in me and I broke from the trance.  I had guardians too.  The hemlock caressing my face grew on the dust of my ancestors, but I wouldn’t sustain it with my own blood this night.  The race was on.  

All at once I sailed down the embankment, stretching out in long strides, confident that each footfall would land solid.  My hatchet remained in my right hand, and my musket came along in my left.  As I ran, I wondered how the moose had fared back at the lake.  Was it still fighting or had its bones already been snapped by powerful jaws to spill its essence out in hot globs?

As my muscles warmed, my pace increased.  I glanced at the Milky Way for bearing, and corrected my course towards where I knew the mountains lay.  One of the gentle hoots behind me transformed into the excited yip of a hunting fox, and my attuned ears caught the sound of feet padding over the ground through thin summer moccasin soles.  There were swishes as branches were swept aside by the barrels of muskets and the hafts of war clubs.  I pumped my arms and drew deep breaths in and over the fabric of my lungs, like wind feeding on the alveoli of the forest.  

A small stream emerged before me, and I wanted to turn up it.  To splash through its rapids where my tracks couldn’t be easily read, but I had to think smarter.  A flanker would be waiting out there at either side of the front, ready to catch me with a swing of the hatchet.  No.  I leapt over it and kept on, its mist wetting my face and exhilarating me.  Before I could stop myself, I cut loose with a loud “Heeeoooowwww!”  If I was to die that night my father would have been proud of my defiant howl.  

This thought freed strong emotions from inside of me.  An electric current rose up through my body and overwhelmed my eyes.  Chasing behind me, the warriors abandoned all silence and responded to my shout in resounding yips and howls; half in admiration of my defiance, and half in lust for ending me.                             

The dirty English, I thought.  They could never have caught me free on my feet in these woods, so they sent the Mohawks to do the job for them.  To root out the last Lenape living free in this country.  And they were good.  It would be honorable to die at the hands of these men, but I would not make it easy for them.  

I looked for a steep sided gully to force the net of pursuers to collapse together, but I came flat against another hill instead.  As I threw myself up it, my legs burned and my abdomen ached as if on fire.  My throat and the spaces between my teeth tasted of blood, but I knew these sensations well and pushed into them.  If there was a chance for me to survive, I had to break my pursuers resolve early and then sustain a punishing pace as long as it would take to win my life.  

As the warriors started up the hill behind me they were close enough that I heard one of them grunt with exertion.  For an instant I could see his shape flail then flap upward like a raptor taking to a thermal.  I thought about raising my musket and taking the shot, but it would be difficult to reload the long ungainly barrel at the speed that I was running.  Fixated on this one man, I almost missed the other warrior who was sailing up the hill silently to my left.  Finally I saw him, his knees rising with ease to the level of his chest where a charm of power in a feathered pouch hung from a hide thong around his neck.  When his eyes met mine, a fierce play of moonlight glinted momentarily in their wetness.  Anger and hate found no time in that look of frankness and shared fate, even as our limbs designed to steal each others life.

I turned and forced my final steps for the crest of the hill, and the warrior automatically began to lift his musket.  As if thinking better of it, he dropped it again, and kept coming.  In this move I learned much.

His restraint told me that he didn’t want to risk the noise.  If he wasn’t afraid of something out there he would have taken the shot.  This wasn’t his territory, and he feared discovery.  This party must be here without the consent of the Mohicans who now hunted these grounds in absence of my own people.  As I leapt and bounded down the back slope I had an idea.  Each tribe has a specific call which distinguishes them.  A unique war-cry recognizable in the fog and confusion of action.  I skimmed off the bottom of the hill just as my pursuers gained the crest behind me.  Turning over my shoulder I shouted again, this time manipulating the notes into the distinct howl of the Mohicans.  

Behind me some of the warriors took the bait, and their own excited shouts echoed resoundingly off of ridges and through the moonlit night.  All the rest of the world was silent.  I could feel their broad front collapsing together as they fixated on me and struggled to keep my pace.  Gaining another hill, I paused for an instant in full beam of the moon and let loose with another cry.  This time a sharp crack shattered the air, and a flume of orange flame spit at me from a musket’s maw.  The lead ball buzzed away harmlessly above my head, and I turned again and ran.  

We kept on like this until the abrupt slopes of the Kaaterskill Mountains—once the stronghold of the defiant Esopus band of the Munsee-Lunáapee—seemed near enough to touch.  The boom of the musket, the shouts of my pursuers, and the borrowed Mohican cry on my tongue echoed off the mountains and resounded down through the river bottoms.  Once again the smell of smoke came to my nostrils, though this time it tasted of river-birch, maple, and other hardwoods seasoned on the limb and gathered by discerning hands.  My feet found a trail and I could feel tracks through my thin deer-hide summer soles.  The path edged downhill and I pushed hard, making pain and fatigue my companions.  

Gaining the open trail behind me my pursuers lengthened their own gaits, and we flitted through alternating strips of moonlight and shade which lay over the path like stripes on a pickerel.  More tracks popped out of the path before me as it fell abreast of the wide gushing creek that coursed along the eastern boundary of the mountains.  The warriors were still coming on.  Soon I would have to choose the ground to make my stand.  Ahead, flicking through the foliage like lightning bugs, came the faint signature of a fire.  A moment later it disappeared, and I made my bet.  Once again I howled, and finished the cry with the signature of the Mohicans.  Behind me the hunters came on.

As the cry left my mouth, my eyes caught a silhouette off to my left by the creek.  Somehow I had let a man slip onto my flank.  At that moment, the moonlight shone so fully on him that I saw the way his skull was shaved smooth up to a sharp little ornamented crest of hair atop his head, the dyed blanket hanging like a robe from his left shoulder, the glinting brass bands clamped around his biceps, and even the tattoo of six arrows bound together on his bare chest.  He was Mohawk.  

His attention was oriented fully on me and his musket sat ready in his hands.  My fatal mistake lay plain and heavy on me, but the gaze that locked with mine was more measuring than aggressive.  A question fell across his face as it followed me, and his musket did not rise.  Nevertheless, I had every intention to continue my sprint away from the mystified Mohawk, and the warriors who were still racing down the trail behind me.  

I turned my head forward to pick my route, and that is when I saw another man standing at a curve in the trail.  I had little energy to make a fight, but I readied for the collision.  In a sound as sweet as Kaaterskill waters trickling through the rocks, the words that emerged from the shadow figure were not Mohawk, but Mohican.  

“Brother, what chases you?”

I let myself carry a few more steps into the trees, and doubling over, I responded with the last drop of breath in me.  

“Enemy…” 

More figures came alongside me from the shadows by the side of the trail, but I was panting too hard to examine them.  The Mohican who had addressed me wore an open linen trade shirt revealing the faded symbols of his clan and his personal protectors tattooed across his chest.  He looked in the direction of the man standing by the rock.  The Mohawk gestured up the trail towards the coming pursuers.  In an unhurried cry on the night, the Mohican let loose with a long howl from deep down in his diaphragm.  Thirty yards up the trail indistinct shapes skidded to a halt and held.  

“Who are you,” The Mohican challenged in the tongue particular to his people and readily understood by mine?

Silence.  The shades up the trail shifted and crabbed to find shadow and cover, but they did not retreat.  Throughout the surrounding trees there was a chorus of clicks, like metallic crickets, as flintlocks on both sides were cocked into firing configuration.  A tense breeze stirred in dry leaves, and the Mohican remained standing bravely in the moonlight.  He cast another glance at his Mohawk counterpart who lingered behind the polished boulder by the creek.  In a deep woody timber, the Mohawk repeated the question, this time in the Iroquoian tongue of his nation.  “Who are you?”

There came no response.  A hollow rumble began to sound out of the night as an east wind rose and moved through the millions of trees that clung to the heights, and echoed down ominously on us children of the forest where we foundered in the river bottom.  The shadows had grown longer as the moon sank towards the morning, and there was still no response to the challenges spoken in Mohican or Mohawk.  I focused on catching my breath, slid my hatchet into my belt, and brought my musket full into my hands.  The Mohawk spoke again.

“Qui etes vous?”  

French.  I knew the tongue, but not well.  More silence.  I thought my tormentors must have slipped away, or perhaps they were only the spirits of my ancestors following me from the ghost cliffs to punish me for abandoning my land.  Finally, a disembodied voice came at us from the dark with coppery resolve.

“Qui demande?”

I looked away from the obscure play of long shadow before me to where the Mohawk stood.  He seemed to grimace with his entire body.  In accented yet clear Mohican, the Mohawk murmured toward us, “They are Ottawas.” 

Ottawas?  All this time I thought I was being chased by Mohawks on my way to join the Wapanachki tribes in the North, but it was actually the Ottawa who were hunting me.  The Ottawa were one of the three primary member-nations of the Anishinaabe confederation.  The Anishinaabeg—though they dwelled distantly about the Great Lakes—were Wapanachki peoples.  Wapanachki—like the Mohicans…And like me.

The Mohawk leaned out from the rock, and with an angry hiss he shouted back up the trail to where the shades crouched and coiled for action unseen in their cover.  “Cette terre est sous la protection des Mohawk. Vous Ottawa sont loin de chez eux.”

The shifting parade of languages was not finished.  Bypassing the incensed Mohawk warrior altogether, one of the invaders addressed us in fractured English from the dark.  

“Mohican brothers, hear I… Mohawks no good.  British no good.  Mohicans our brothers.  Fight against English and Iroquois with us.”

Ironically, this arrangement was exactly what I was heading north to find, but the skull moon was making havoc of my plans.  This provocation to his authority was more than the pride of the Mohawk by the creek was able to endure.  Stepping out from behind the boulder he sighted in on a likely shadow up the trail.  With a thunderous clap, his musket etched a streak of fire five yards long against the blue of the stubborn night.

With hardly a delay, three Ottawa muskets erupted in response, sending their own balls of fire down on the Mohawk.  I tried to pinpoint their locations, but then a half-dozen explosions boomed from my left and right and over my head in a deafening cascade.  The visual liquidity which my eyes had accumulated throughout the night vanished instantly, and a black curtain fell over my vision, impenetrable even to the strongest efforts of the moon.  The blasts had also put my hearing to sleep, robbing me of yet another crucial sense.  

Blinded and deafened by their own shots, the figures who had gathered around me paused behind the cover of trees and rocks, and waited for their senses to return to them, or for the enemy to fire another volley and come charging down out of the dark.  No more flashes came from the blackness.  After several tense breaths, my eyes adjusted slightly back to the tones of the moonlight, only to discover that a cloud of pungent gun smoke was drifting between our opposing parties.  We waited, but there was no more disturbance.  

“Uncle,” a voice said in Mohican, “let me go after them.”

The older man held a hand up towards the young speaker as he listened intently to the woods.

“Sta.  Let them go a bit.”  

The younger Mohican was disappointed, but he obeyed.

“You see how uncertain it is to fight with muskets at night, nephew.  Go first and make sure none of our men have been hit.”

Then he turned to me.  “How many were they?”  His voice was fully trusting.

“It is hard to say.  Not many I think.  Maybe, six or seven.”

He peered into the dark thoughtfully.  

“They only fired three guns,” he said.  “They would want to keep half of their weapons loaded and ready.  I think you are right.  Six or seven”  

To our right, the Mohawk who fired the instigating shot drew near.  Two of the figures at my side crouched with him and they whispered back and forth in their soft trickling tongue.  A language that differed more from the Wapanachki tongues of Munsee and Mohican than the languages of birds and fish.  There was more than one Mohawk among these Mohicans.  Instinctively, my hand felt for the deer antler hilt of the knife which was tucked into its sheath at my belt.  I caressed it but let it sleep.  The earliest stories of war I had heard around the fires in my youth were of the centuries of fighting between my Lunáapee people and the five—and later six nations of the Iroquois League.  Especially the Mohawk.  The reputations of my grandfathers and great-uncles were built on flashing, whirling contests of steel and stone against them.  In more recent times peace had been established between us, with the Iroquois as victors, but the exact terms of that peace were not always agreed upon.

The Mohawk leader was apparently untouched by the volley fired at him from the enemy muskets.  The flash from his own shot had probably blinded the raiders enough that they could not pin him with their aim which, after experiencing their tactics, I had no doubt was practiced to a lethal accuracy. 

My finger fell in a notch on my knife hilt.  Long before I was born, the Six-Nations claimed that we Lenape, and our kindred Wapanachki nations, were subjects under them—for it was so by most accounts.  Yet my blade had taken one of their lives, and my hatchet another.  And now they crouched near me.  Turned their backs to me.  The Mohican leader went to them and they mixed their languages to make their thoughts known to one another.

The gift of hearing was coming slowly back to my head.  A touch of red was on the horizon, and on its edge with the night it brought the East Wind, and the multitudes of trees sang and howled on the steep slopes high above.  Where we stood by the tumult of the creek the air remained still, and the stench of gun smoke lingered upon us.  

I looked up to the pyramid shaped mountain, where it sat near the cusp of our three territories.  The skull moon was finally surrendering behind it, but one unblinking socket remained hanging above the ridge to peer down upon me.  I was the last free Lunáapee on the edge of my country, and it was the end of the world.       

END CHAPTER 1.  To be continued….

Thank you for reading chapter 1 of THE JAGGED GREEN EDGE!  This Historical Novel will explore not only the Native roots of Special Forces during the French and Indian War, but more importantly, the profound and largely unrecognized fingerprints of Native First Nations on the positive aspects of the culture, governance, individualism, spirituality, and character of the United States, Canada, and the modern world.  The reason I have chosen to release chapters individually in blog form, is because the continuing efforts to fill this story with as much insight as possible makes this very much a living project which will evolve and adjust until it is finally printed.  Among many others, I am indebted to several old friends and new acquaintances of various First Nations who have graciously and enthusiastically shared whatever they can.  At the top of the list are friends, wisdom keepers, and language instructors from the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans, especially JoAnn Schedler, Bonney Hartley, Nikole Webster, and Brock Schreiber.  Big thanks also goes to James, Jesse, and Joe Bruchac of the Ndakinna Center near Saratoga Springs, NY for beginning to open the door to the stories, wilderness skills, and language of the Abenakik! https://www.ndakinnacenter.org/  Also, big thanks to new friends like Dylan and Andrew Smith, Drew Shuptar, and Roger Paul for teaching me so much already.  Finally, huge thanks go to Ben Rhodd and family who opened their door to me over 20 years ago, and have been sharing Lakota ways ever since.  Any shortcomings or inaccuracies are due entirely to me and my interpretation, and do not reflect on any other individual or Native organization.  Anushiik, Onewee, Wliwni, Niawen, Wopila!

As for me, I grew up in Munsee-Lenape country (Northern NJ) and I’ve been obsessed with learning these stories and ways, as well as those of other First Nations, since I could walk.  On the professional side, I’ve discovered that the Special Forces (Green Berets) lineage I am part of has aspects to this day that are deeply rooted in our Native predecessors form around the period of the French and Indian War.  It is my hope that this combination, as well as diligent study of cultural aspects and historical resources, will create a story that is stunning and healing in its revelations.  Ultimately, however, this work is a novel, and for good reason.  A novel allows exploration and inference into the expanses of the past that exist in great quantities beyond the records of history.  Experiencing the wild alone, and war in company, has shaped my intuition and thinking in a way that directs my own interpretation beyond those of the armchair historian or writer.  The purpose of any good story is to inspire, and I hope that mine will inspire a broad demographic of readers to seek the true cultural experts, wisdom keepers, historians, and shapers of history in person and in the pages of their works.  With that in mind, if you have such information or insight, consider this blog format an open invitation to comment, share, or correct what you would like here, or in private with me (matt@warriorwilderness.com).  As I said already, this is a work in progress, and letting it see the light of day now gives ample opportunity to make updates, corrections, and all around better the message that comes out the other side.

Authors notes on Chapter 1:

1. Algonquian, Algonquin, Algonkin, Wapanachki?  Throughout this chapter and subsequent ones, I am currently using the term “Wapanachki” for the large cultural-linguistic group that includes the Lenape, Mohicans, Abenaki, Ottawa, Algonquin, and numerous other related nations and tribes that speak a similar root language, instead of the widely used “Algonguian.”  The term Algonquian originates from the French familiarity with the Algonquin or Algonkin Nation of eastern Canada.  Though the Algonkin are a vital member of the larger family, the Lenape (Delaware) Nation of the lower Hudson and Delaware River region is more properly seen as the root of the entire cultural-linguistic family.  Our modern use of “Algonguian” to classify this family of Nations seems to come from Alfred Galatin’s creation in 1836 of the “Algonkin-Lenape” group.  That is to say, over 80 years after this book takes place.  For some reason the Lenape got dropped, and we are left only with Algonquian, even though the Lenape are almost certainly seen as the original seat of that widespread language and culture.  Unfortunately this misclassification has helped the Lenape (Delaware) become lost in history compared to their rightful status and influence.  My use and spelling of “Wapanachki” comes from the works of John Heckewelder, who was a Moravian missionary who lived among several Lenape groups in the late 1700’s, and spoke their languages.  He tells us the following: “These people (the Lenni Lenape) are known and called by all the western, northern, and some of the southern nations, by the name of Wapanachki…People at the Rising Sun…” Heckewelder goes on to say that the Lenape, “are acknowledged by near forty Indian tribes, who we call nations, as being their grandfathers.  All these nations, derived from the same stock, recognize each other as Wapanachki, which among them is a generic name.”  If you notice a confusing similarity between Wapanachki, Wabanaki, and Abenaki names and their meanings, don’t be discouraged!  The current “Wabanaki Confederacy” which is composed of related tribes and nations in northern New England and eastern Canada, including the “Abenaki,” was traditionally extremely close with the Lenape and Mohicans.  With this in mind, they doubtless saw one another as being part of one people, though also distinct organizations, before political lines and geography separated them.  Bottom line, in this story when you read “Wapanachki,” it means the whole cultural linguistic group related to the Lenape, popularly referred to as “Algonquians.”  “Algonquin” or “Algonkin” will only be used in reference to the specific Nation from the St. Lawrence area.  “Abenaki” and “Wabanaki” will also be used in reference to specific nations and tribes of the Wapanachki at specific places and times.

Some Links and Resources:

There is no way I can begin to list the entire range of sources being used in this project, but I will share a few each post, as well as cool links:

Wilderness training, storytelling, books:

https://www.ndakinnacenter.org/ : The Ndakinna Center is an amazing training and education non-profit near Saratoga Springs NY, run by the Bruchac family (Western Abenaki descent).  They run wilderness training programs for children and adults, host storytelling, and have a large selection of books they have authored.  Ndakinna serves as a beacon for people coming together with positive interests related to the land and all of its people.

History and Culture:

https://www.longhousepodcast.com/ : The Iroquois Legends and History Podcast is something I’ve been turned on to recently.  Presented by the Cotter Brothers, Andrew and Caleb, It is a comprehensive, compelling, and often humorous way to become introduced to the history and legends of not only the Iroquois, but the Northeast Indian Nations as a whole.

Books: Though books about other cultures written by religious missionaries can be notoriously fraught with pitfalls, Heckewelder shows a notable love and respect for his subject matter, and if you can see through his bias on spiritual matters, his records form living among the Lenape and Mohicans in the late 1700’s is a treasure trove of compelling information to explore and consider.