of the
Tuscaroras become soft, they hide behind their squaws! Black Wolf is a
great chief. Seven moons of cohonks have passed since the Ricahecrians
sharpened their hatchets and came down from the mountains to where the
waters of Powhatan fall over many rocks. There they met the palefaces.
The One above all was angry with his Ricahecrians. They saw for the
first time the guns of the palefaces. They thought they were gods who
spat fire at them and slew them with thunder. Their hearts became soft,
and they fled before the strange gods. Some the palefaces slew, and some
they took prisoner. Black Wolf saw his brother, the great chief Grey
Wolf, fall. The Ricahecrians went back to the Blue Mountains, and their
women raised the death chant for those whom they left stretched out on
the bank of the great river.... Seven times had the maize ripened, when
Black Wolf led a war party against a tribe that dwelt on the banks of
the Pamunkey where a fallen pine might span it. The waters ran red with
blood. When there were no more Monacans to kill, when the fires had
burnt low, Black Wolf looked down the waters of the Pamunkey. He had
heard that it ran into a great water that was salt, whose further bank a
man could not see. He had heard that the palefaces rode in canoes that
had wings, great and white. He thought he would like to know if these
things were true, or if they were but tales of the singing birds. To
find out, Black Wolf and his young men dipped their oars into the water
of the Pamunkey, and rowed towards the moonrise. In the morning they met
twenty men of the Pamunkeys in three canoes. The Pamunkeys lie deep in
the slime of the river; the eels eat them; their scalps shall hang
before the wigwams of Black Wolf and his young men. In the afternoon,
they drove their canoes into the reeds and went into the forest to find
meat. Black Wolf's arrow brought down a buck and they feasted.
Afterwards they caught a hunter who saw only the deer he was chasing.
They tied him to a tree and made merry with him. When he was dead, they
drew their boats from out the reeds, and rowed on down the broadening
river. The next day, at the time of the full sun-power, they came to
this village. Many years before the palefaces came, the Chickahominies
were a great nation, reaching to the foot of the Blue Mountains, and
then were they and the Ricahecrians friends and allies. When Black Wolf
showed them the totem of his tribe upon his breast, they welcom