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Pocahontas
Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat
Chapter One
Apowa / Dream-Vision
"This is not a land for gods," said the buffalo man. But it was not the buffalo man talking anymore ... it was the fire speaking, the crackling and the burning of the flame itself that spoke to Shadow in the dark place under the earth.
"This land was brought up from the depths of the ocean by a diver," said the fire. "It was spun from its own substance by a spider. It was shat by a raven. It is the bones of a fallen father, whose bones are mountains, whose eyes are lakes." "This is the land of dreams and fire," said the flame.
-- Neil Gaiman
Mystery, not history, was the bread of life.
-- Richard Noll
According to Indigenous Science, everything that exists is held within the great cycle of time, and thus there exist ceremonies that acknowledge and assist in its renewal.
-- F. David Peat
oo-maa haa'a / once upon a time
That was the time that Yellow Woman was taken by Whirlwind Manito, and he took her to another place far beyond the great waters. She was standing in the south. In the south she was standing. First Whirlwind man came from the south, and then he came from the east, then he came from the east another time. That was when Yellow Woman knew that it was time. She was standing in the south, and Southwind Woman was talking to her.
Look here, Southwind Woman said. Yellow Woman. You should go to the south a little ways. You should find the one who will take you across the great water. That's the one who comes on a seabird with great white wings. The one that moves by my breath, or the breath of one of my sisters.
Yellow Woman waited. She was standing there in the south. In the south she was waiting. Then the wind came from the south, and she stood. I will not go to the water just yet, she said. Later, when the dawn comes. When the north wind comes to stay. When Ice Manito, Windigo, comes. Then maybe I will go.
Then Yellow Woman. She was very young, and she got very tired of waiting. But it was the way of her people, and her aunts kept her heart strong. They gave her many dances to learn, and many chants to sing. They helped her make the steps and the calls with her throat that would carry into the world of the manito. She went out every day. She went here and she went other places. And the time passed until the ice held the world still and silent, and she heard the wind saying. Now, Yellow Woman. This time.
She went back to where the old women were. Where the clan mothers and the aunts were. And they dressed her and put the down of white winter birds in her hair. They painted the parting of her hair red. Her face they painted the color red, pocoon, and her hands they made patterns on, and on her ankles they made other patterns.
Yellow Woman went among the elders, among all the holy people, even some of the wild men who frightened her. But she looked down or straight ahead. She remembered the chants and the steps of the dance.
They were singing. They were talking. In that Big House, quioccosan. That holy House, quioccosan. The elders, the matchacómoco, were talking. They were honoring Fire with tobacco, apook. Generous hands gave apook. They sang. The ones who sang that way sang. Everyone was standing. There in the Great House, quioccosan. We honor you, Fire Man. We honor you Fire Woman. It is truth that is spoken here. It is truth that is done here. Thank you.
The other women. Her sisters. Red woman. Black/Dark Blue Woman. White Woman. Standing in their places. They stood in the west. They stood in the east. They stepped this way. The stepped another way. They were standing. They were singing. It was a holy song they were singing. They were crying. That the supernaturals, manito, would hear them. That the holiest, manitt, would hear them. That they were standing in truth, oo-maa'ha'a. The voices rising.
Yellow woman raising her voice. In the highest tremolo she was singing. She was singing. She was walking. She threw herself down. Down she threw herself. On the body of the stranger. On his body she fell. Singing in the highest tremolo.
I will take this one and guide him.
That's what I will do.
It is the truth I speak
Had Pocahontas been Laguna Pueblo and had she been a yellow corn woman and so part of the old cycle about the supernatural sisters -- red corn woman, yellow corn woman, blue/black corn woman, white corn woman -- this is how her story might have been told, in translation. As she was not Laguna Pueblo of the Keres Nation but Pamunkey, of the Powhatan Alliance, her story would have been told traditionally in the words and cadences of her people. Some of the words current among the people of the tsenacommacah I've added to this Keresan-based version. Laguna is not Werowocomoco, the town where Pocahontas was raised, and Powhatan was her language, not Keres. But then, modern Virginia bears little resemblance to the tsenacommacah she knew, and no one there spoke modern American English. She was of a time best thought of as world renewal time, world change time, or world transformation time; it's clear that this is so. The world we know bears only a marginal resemblance to the one she knew.
Here in This Sacred Place I Stand
As the spring equinox approached, Pocahontas knew it was time for her apowa, or Dream-Vision; it was several years before Captain John Smith even set foot on American soil, establishing with his Virginia Company the settlement at Jamestown. At midmorning she quietly stepped out of the longhouse where she lived -- a half-cylindrical structure made of bark and animal skins slashed to wooden frames ...
Pocahontas
Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat. Copyright © by Paula Gunn Allen. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
