Wabete

By Bob Turgeon

It is a land of turbulence and intrigue, yet inundated with tranquility and serenity, of majestic hills and sterile deserts, of grassy plains and forests thick with trees. A land teaming with wildlife, with skies darkened by endless flights of birds, and with streams and rivers and mighty lakes of pure freshwater.

It is where the Spanish soldiers of fortune force themselves upon the native peoples in search of gold. Where French explorers push into the interior on the water highways. Men like Cadillac, Cartier, Champlain, LaSalle, and Marquette spread their cultural influence on the many peoples of the land. Where Swedes, English, Dutch, Portuguese, and other Europeans seek to extract the wealth of the bountiful land.

Caught between these powers is a population of diverse societiessome with strong social structures and laws, and many facing external pressures with which they cannot cope, ancient peoples who called this land their home for many, many years.

The Five Nations of Iroquois exist with a truly representative form of government, unwritten rules that guide their everyday lives and affect all neighboring peoples and a completely volunteer military that enforces council decisions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514475188

Bob Turgeon

I entered the world in 1937 as the third child of seven in the automotive capital of Detroit, during the closing years of the Great Depression. After spending thirty-five years employed in that industry, it was capped off as the vice president of a robotics, tooling, and engineering company in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I’ve been married to my beautiful wife, Barbara, for thirty-seven years. Like my parents and their parents, I became the father of seven children. After twenty-three years in the west, including nine in Idaho, we returned to Michigan. Our children are scattered in Colorado, Michigan, and Alaska. I always yearned to be a writer but never found the time until we relocated to the beautiful Sedona, Arizona, area in June of 1990. Now with nothing to do but chase the little ball around on the golf course, I took to writing. Traveling around forty-nine of the fifty states and most of the Canadian provinces opened my mind to the wonders of the many different peoples and ways of living. These, and authors like James Michener, Alan Eckert Kenneth Roberts, Tony Hillerman, and others, became my inspiration to dream and invent stories.

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Copyright © 2016 by Bob Turgeon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/13/2016

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The New Land and Its People

Chapter 2 A Free Man

Chapter 3 Partners In The Wilderness

Chapter 4 A Family-A Home-A Farm

Chapter 5 1693 The Growing Season

Chapter 6 The New Business Partner

Chapter 7 The Little Elk

Chapter 8 The Canadian

Chapter 9 The New Life

Chapter 10 French Canada

Chapter 11 The Forest People

Chapter 12 A Wild Girl and the Pleasant One

Chapter 13 Diamond Spots

Chapter 14 The Reunion

Chapter 15 Beaver Island

Chapter 16 Leaving

Chapter 17 Fall 1714

Chapter 18 Fire

Chapter 19 1715

Chapter 20 The Duel

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I t is a land of turbulence and intrigue, yet inundated with tranquility and serenity, of majestic hills and sterile deserts, of grassy plains and forests thick with trees. A land teaming with wild life; with skies darkened by endless flights of birds; and with streams and rivers and mighty lakes of pure fresh water.

It is where the Spanish soldiers of fortune force themselves upon the native peoples in search of gold. Where French explorers push into the interior on the water highways. Men like Cadillac, Cartier, Champlain, LaSalle and Marquette spread their cultural influence on the many peoples of the land. Where Swedes, English, Dutch, Portuguese and other Europeans seek to extract the wealth of the bountiful land.

Caught between these powers is a population of diverse societies; some with strong social structures and laws; many facing external pressures whith which they can not cope. Ancient peoples who called this land their home for many many years.

The Five Nations of Iroquois exist with a truly representative form of government, unwritten rules that guide their everyday lives and effect all neighboring peoples and a completely volunteer military that enforces Council decisions.

Wabete, a soon-to-be-man, evades the Seneca enforcers only to come in conflict with a hungry bear.

Six year old Corinne escapes from a burning cabin and survives alone in the deep woods.

After spending most of his life in forced service on English war ships, Fitzpatrick discovers freedom, companions and an Indian woman in the American wilderness.

It is here that a melting pot of customs and breeding mix. A Wyandotte-Winnebego boy and a half breed girl, an Irish-English man and a Sioux Medicine Woman, a French Canadian and an Objibway woman, a young German couple fleeing from religious intolerance, a Persian slave girl and a Pennobscot hunter, a Chippewa brave, an African boy, a Icelander, a Pole, a spirited wolf and a wild mare coming together to form A Good Life in a land of plenty and of terror.

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CHAPTER 1

The New Land and Its People

T his is a tale of a place, a New Land. It is fantastic discovery, mammoth in size with tremendous possibilities. It is a truly young, in terms of recorded history, and seemingly untested land. It beautiful yet can be hostile. The New Land is strange and unexplored. It is unmapped and unspoiled.

It is a different land. A strange exciting land that has existed virtually untouched by the so-called Civilized peoples of the Old World. Wild in its very nature. In vast areas, the tundra is barren and arid. Extensive fertile plains cover the interior. The world tallest trees and most compact forests are part of this New Land. It is exciting. A relatively unknown land to the multitudes of societies that, past centuries, have intermingled, governed, populated and recorded their existence. Actually, it is only new to the human beings that dwell in the old lands of Europe, Asia and Africa that lie east of the ever dangerous Atlantic Ocean or to the west of the vast Pacific.

This New Land has been formed over millions of years. Shaped by strong and steady powerful breezes that mold and shape over years and years of constant pressure. Sculptured through torrential rains and violent volcanic eruptions. Blasted by blowing, cutting, wind driven sands that gouge deep ruts and cut massive holes and cause shaping of the earth and wear down massive rock formations and erode the softer mountains and construct archway bridges and re-arrange the surface of the plains and alter the landscape. Torn and twisted by frequent earthquakes. Gouged by fast running fresh water rivers. Pounded with powerful ocean waves and high eroding tides. Riddled throughout with constantly growing, skyward reaching mountains and older shrinking stockpiles of granite and stone.

Electrical bolts of violence streak from the heavens and repeatedly violate the earth’s crust and blackened the vegetation on this New Land for years and years. Over and over again, fires sweep across this New Land blown by fierce winds and fed by the abundance of still growing and dead fuels and nurtured by open and endless wind battered plains. Forceful winds, twisting with power built up of hundreds of miles per hour of intense turbulence, rip and tear everything in their path and create embryonic beds for future forests, jungles and prolific gardens.

The surface had been twisted and turned and gouged through countless ice ages. Massive mountains of hard packed moisture consisting of frozen snow and rain and trapped, quick chilled river runoff turned to ice and compacted, over years and years, into aggressive glacier motion exerting many tons of grinding force. These glaciers grow in height and slowly move, in all directions as they increase in size, ripping and tearing and scraping the terrain. Everything in their expanding paths gets pushed and pulverized and moved. Rocks and boulders and earth are carried up or pushed aside, eventually, creating smooth valleys and meadows of green lush grasses and enormous fresh water lakes and raging ice cold rivers and little dormant ponds and formidable piles of boulders.

It has evolved, this New Land, into two extremely large landmasses or continents floating on constantly shifting carriers or plates. One frontier land extends almost to the very southernmost tip of the world and the other to the frozen waste under the North Star. A pair of extensive massive continents joined by a narrow strip of sweltering, torrid jungle, these New Lands dominates the Western Hemisphere and wait. Wait for discovery. Wait for adventure. Wait for life.

Indeed, life arrives!

One hundred and fifty million years before humans walked anywhere on this planet; many and various forms of Dinosaurs populate this New Land. Some of these creatures live in large herds and exists with, only, a hint of social needs. Others live lone and dismal lives. One of the largest, the Brontosaurus, weighs over fifty tons and exceeds forty feet in height. It and other four-legged browsers, such as the Diplodocus and Camarasaurus, feed on the leaves of trees, tall grasses and ferns that grow abundantly across this New Land.

Meat eaters, also, thrive upon this New Land. Saber-toothed Tigers and Cave Bears, the odd shaped Stegosaurus with short front legs and a plated back ending in a spiked tail, Ceratosaurus and Allosaurus who walk on their hind legs and display serrated-recurred teeth and the chicken sized Nanosaurus to name a few. They catch and devour prey and carrion of all sizes. For these hunters, the New Land is a land of plenty.

Strange, inconceivable water dwelling and airborne creatures can be found. Uncounted varieties of reptiles and mammals of every size populate the many nooks and crannies of this New Land. There are rodents. Ground living rodents, tree dwelling rodents, cave occupying rodents and amphibious rodents exist.

All of these creatures are born, they will live and they will die on this New Land. Most become extinct sixty five million years before the advent of humans. Some evolve into other shapes or different creatures. Some are; originally, land dwelling mammals that return to the sea like the dolphin, and the whale. Several, including the seal and the sea lion, learn to survive on land and in the sea. A few like the turtle, the frog, the snake and the alligator survive the eons of time without significant alteration.

Upon these New Lands can be found some of the most magnificent tree filled forests, the thickest growth of vegetation-entangled jungles and the most extensive murky, black water, vegetation enclosed vast swamps ever known. The New Land is saturated with grasses sometimes up to six feet tall and vines that entangle everything in their path and plants and flowers of every description. Included on this same land are vast areas that comprise several of the driest most extensive deserts on earth. These sun baked stretches range from barren alkaloid valleys to succulent covered ranges. Vast numbers of cactus survive in these arid lands. Many of these species grow nowhere else on the planet.

Multitudes of snow capped rugged mountains traverse the land and the biggest trees the world would ever know grow here. Formidable rivers weave their way from the mountaintop through the lowlands to send volumes of fresh water into the mighty seas of the east and west and north and south. Portions of the melting northern ice and snow flow into five phenomenal glacier gouged and formed cavities that contain the greatest concentration of the fresh water on the face of the earth. The New Land abounds with trees and plants of all kinds. The nearby seas proliferate with sea creatures and mammals. Fresh water Lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, creeks and pools teem with fish and furry creatures. Bison and bear, deer and elk, moose and antelope, musk-ox and sheep, wolf and fox, wild cats and rabbits, jungle living beings, creatures of the forests, those whose home is the desert, swamp dwellers and all forms of creatures roam the land. Vast quantities of birds cover the skies. Gulls, pigeons, hawks, turkeys, pheasant, enormous eagles and vultures whose wings spread up to ten feet wide, owls, geese, ducks, storks, pelicans, bluebirds, red birds, yellow birds, blackbirds, singing birds, squawking birds, humming birds, millions and millions and millions of birds fly over these lands. They swim in the waters and perch in the trees and eat the insects, the vegetation and seeds of the New Land. There are snakes and spiders and scorpions of all kinds and mosquitoes and roaches and beetles, and butterflies, and worms, and billions of ants. Fruit bearing trees of many varieties flourish, as do plants with berries and vegetables. These are great New Lands. They are fertile. They are dangerous. They support abundant life. They are full of adventure.

Eventually, PEOPLE appear on these New Lands.

Perhaps fifty million people live here by the time that the eastern Civilized explorer peoples arrive to claim the New Land as their own. These Natives have been here since at least twenty five thousand years before the time of Christ. Some theories indicate that these are the lands were man began and from which man was excommunicated by the wrath of God. One religious sect, the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, is based on the belief that man’s foundations, his very origin, derive from this New Land. Another theory extracts the native population from Egyptian heritage with cultural genesis as the Lost Continent of Mu. A fifth century Chinese Buddhist legend recalls a voyage of provincial peoples and priests who, while traveling the mighty oceans, were blown off course and carried by stormy seas and currents far to the east to a new place called Fu Sang. Only the priests returned to China, so the legend says.

Discoveries of Pictones (Pict) hieroglyphics and writings along the Arkansas River in modern day Kansas give credence to lighter skinned taller natives in the interior of the continent. How these evidences of northern European encroachment some 1500 years ago got there is pure speculation.

How man got to this New Land and when is still a varied and wondrous mystery. He may have floated across the seas in small fishing boats taken off course by violent winds or pushed by strong currents that saw the floating vessels landing in small and varied groups along the many miles and miles of coast. He may have island hopped over a period of countless years, as did the Polynesians. Humans may have penetrated the interior from hundreds of different directions. Maybe they walked over a land bridge that joined all landmasses at one time or migrated from Asia across the Bering Striates. When the polar ice withdrew at the close of the last ice age, primitive beings may have wandered over the ice-less shores from the Arctic following the migrating game on which their lives depended. Humans may even have evolved on this land. Dinosaur’s certainty did and they used this land for millions of years.

The origin of Homo sapiens upon this land may have materialized from varying and different races. It is even possible that many of these things happened at various times and that the natives of the land are descended from separate Asian groups of Chinese, Japanese, Polynesians, Indian or Siberian, or from European strains such as Greeks, Vikings, Norsemen, Franks and Picts. Egyptians and Phoenicians wandered the existing seas for centuries and may have stumbled unexpectedly upon this fresh soil. Or maybe all of these other peoples evolved from those that wandered off of these sensational unknown lands. However it was that humans got to this New Land, they lived on and from it long before the historically documented voyages by the Chinese or the Vikings or the Civilized Europeans that overcame the formidable water barrier that separated these New Lands from the old.

Ample quantities of societies and cultures flourished and died upon these New Lands. The land itself and the many migration routes influenced the growth of the peoples and of their cultures. It dictated the food supply and its abundance limited or helped to expand the population. Where the land is fertile and workable, the people flourish. Nourishing animals and fish and birds, help cultures expand. Where tubers and berries and nuts are found in abundance, the peoples thrive. The types of dwellings and dress of the people are controlled by the materials available. Family life revolves around fishing, or agriculture, or hunting, or even the extensive heat or the severe cold. The style of warfare depends on the abundance of food or water, availability of copper or flint or beach stones or obsidian for spear and arrowheads, wood for making war clubs and bows and shafts for the arrows and boats to carry the warriors and their supplies. Like people all over the world, war depends on greed, misunderstandings and on religious customs.

Nowhere on these New Lands does the all-important wheel make itself evident. Silver and gold, lead and copper are mined and used but the majority of the societies on these lands never leave the stone age or trifle into tools made by mixing soft metals into the bronze that pulled other primitives into advanced tool and weapon making Societies. Yet great cultures thrive in the south west of the northern landmass and also the north west of the southern domain. Ritualistic institutionalized religions develop. Highly improved urban living and structured architecture materializes. Elaborate political and military systems frame everyday lives. Weaving and pottery making and the artful use of soft metals elevate their lives well above the primitive stage. A science based on astronomical observations emerges. A complete and accurate calendar is used. Mathematics and a system of hieroglyphic writing transpire. Fantastic complex irrigation systems are used for an agricultural method far more advanced than that in use in the bulk of the world’s societies. Diverse trade routes are established and extensive surplus storage facilities emerge. An elaborate financial or commodities center flourishes.

North of what modern man now calls Mexico the population is very sparse and far less advanced in culture. The people exist, mostly, by agriculture and by fishing and hunting. A small number prevail, only, by gathering what can be found such as acorns and berries and edible roots. The natives are as diverse from one another in their characteristics and language as are all the various residents of Europe or Asia. Their ability to communicate between differing groups is enhanced by a universal system of hand and body signals. These natives, or Indians as they mistakenly come to be called, live and die on this New Land believing it to be their own.

The Vikings probably came ashore at Cape Cod about the year 1000. The Native peoples proved to be more than the small party of explorer-raiders from Europe could handle and the seafaring men left intending to return in greater number at a later date. Only rumors survive.

Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering these New Lands of some fifty million people on October 12, 1492. Although he never saw or landed on either of the two new great land masses, this Italian from Genoa claimed all the land in the names of his financial backers, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. April of the year 1493 found the returning explorer in custody at a Portuguese settlement on an Island in the Azores. A dispute arose as to whether Columbus had violated an earlier claim to all lands discovered west of the Mediterranean awarded to Portugal in 1427 by Papal decree. Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator had forced an admiral to sail a ship around the African Cape Of Storms into a calm sea. This became known as the calm before the end of the world. Henry, wisely, pushed further exploration around what he now termed, The Cape Of Good Hope, opening up a sea route to the riches of Marco Polo’s Cathay. The wonderful spices of the Orient had to travel miles and miles by desert camel caravans to reach the Mediterranean and the merchant ships monopolized by the Italian States. Now, due to Henry the Navigator, Portugal was transporting ship loads of Oriental goods to Europe. The Pope had settled the dispute between the Italian States, which claimed the trade monopoly of all the goods of the Orient discovered by Marco Polo, and Portugal. Via Papal Decree, He granted all rites to anything west of the Mediterranean to Portugal and east of this demarcation line to the Italians. His word was final in the Catholic Christian European world.

A letter written by Columbus detailing his voyage was published in Rome that same month of his captivity, hopefully, for the benefit of Pope Alexander VI. In May the Pope drew a line of demarcation some two hundred fifty miles west of the Portuguese Azores and declared that any lands discovered west of this line belonged to Spain. Columbus returned to Spain a hero. June of 1494 saw the final location of this demarcation line moved some thousand miles further west by the permanent Treaty of Tordesellas between Spain and Portugal. This gave Portugal a foothold on the yet unseen southern landmass to an area later to be called Brazil. It is noteworthy that until the present day, the primary language of Brazil is Portuguese. The natives of the massive areas of land involved, the New Lands, were never considered, not asked to attend any discussions relating to this agreement, that determined who owned the very ground upon which they lived and had occupied for many centuries. Then again, why would fifty or so million people care?

John Cabot, another Genoa born explorer, returned to Bristol England from rediscovering the five hundred-year lost Viking lands known as Vinland. Cabot and his crew are the first known white men to step foot on the land. He claimed this land for England via a patent granted by King Henry VII, which allowed him to posses all lands unknown to all Christians. The Year was 1497 and, again, the native landowners of what are now much of the eastern coastal lands of Canada and Maine were not consulted.

Gomez Verrazano, a Portuguese navigator, used the White Mountains of New Hampshire as navigational marks in 1500

Spaniards under Ponce de Leon reached Florida in 1513 and shortly after established a settlement called Saint Augustine. Other Spaniards led by Alonso Alvarez de Pineda pushed well into Texas looking for gold in 1519. That same year, a wagon train of Spanish settlers crossed the Rio Bravo, (the Rio Grande), and established a Presidio, (a fortified settlement). Presidio is a Texas border town outside of Big Bend National Park at the present time.

1524 ushered in the exploration of what was to become New Jersey by two different European nations. In the northern part, Dutch traders established settlements in New Netherlands. The south drew Swedish farmers and fur trappers. Their New Sweden villages were scattered throughout the territory.

The Indian land of Stadacona (Quebec) and Hochelega (Montreal) and the River of Canada (the St. Lawrence) are claimed by Jacques Cartier on July 24, 1534 in the name of King Francis I of France. Forty-two years have passed since Christopher Columbus first sighted land in this new hemisphere. Cartier did consult the Indians as to the origin of the name Canada and discovered that it is derived from a Huron-Iroquois word meaning our settlement or village. Even so, without native involvement France now owned this settlement land.

Arizona and the Spanish Franciscan Priests met each other 1539. Gold was the driving force that brought them together.

Hernando De Soto, seeking gold and precious stones, led an expedition of soldiers of fortune through Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee in 1540. That same year, Coronado invaded New Mexico and parts of Colorado in his search for the Seven Cities of Gold.

What of the million and a half people that live on the land above what will be called Mexico that came to be known as North America? Where do they live at the time of Christopher Columbus? They are spread out over the continent. Most live in the deep woods of the north, the swamps of the southeast and southern coasts and the north central plains. Their skin is dark red-brown in color. Their hair is straight and black. Facial and body hair is sparse. Cheekbones are high and eyes are dark. They belong to about two hundred fifty different sects or tribes. They speak some three hundred languages, which find their origin in about six basic groups.

The largest of these language groups is the Algonquian. They live across the breadth of the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Salish occupies the West Coast. Cheyenne, Arapaho and Blackfoot populate the northern plains. The lands of lakes and rivers in the middle of the continent are where Ottawa, Ojibwas, Potawatomi, Fox, Sauk and Miami Algonquian peoples live. The Delaware, Abnakis, Montagnais and many others inhabit the land in the east. Mainly, these people dwell by rivers and lakes and are good fisherman. They cultivate maize and beans and squash. They rely partly on hunting to sustain them.

The most warlike of all the tribes in North America is Iroquois speaking. They live in the midst of the Algonquian peoples of the east and mid-continental river and lakes areas. Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Huron and Seneca live in the north. South of them is the Cherokee, Erie and Tuscarora. Like the Algonquian, these people cultivate maize, squash peas and beans. Hunting and fishing make up a portion of their diet. The spoils of conquest add to their food chain even though much of it is taken from each other.

The Muskogee are related to the Iroquois in speech only. The Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole make up the bulk of this group. They occupy the lands in the south east of the continent. They are agricultural village living peoples. They, along with the Cherokee are the first to welcome and help the new arrival white man and the first to feel the wrath of the Civilized peoples.

The Sioux, Dakota, Omaha, Kansas and Iowa tribes occupy the lands north west of the Great Lakes and northwestern plains. They are of a very large language group known as Siouan. This language group is also related to the Iroquois. These are the buffalo hunters. They are