The Red Heart Read online

  More praise for

  The Red Heart

  “In The Red Heart, James Alexander Thom continues his tradition of historic novels that make the story of North America come alive. He puts flesh and blood on forgotten names, and he breathes life into the stale past. He is probably the most important author of American historic novels writing today because he helps to interpret the distant past for the mind and interest of the modern reader.”

  —JACK WEATHERFORD

  Author of Indian Givers

  “No one can evoke the past like James Alexander Thom. It is as if he opens a door and takes us into another time. This historical tale is a colorful adventure, tempered with the beauty of the Native American way of life, and illuminated by Thom’s wisdom of the wilderness and its people.”

  —SHARYN MCCRUMB

  “Stunning … A truly wonderful work … If you ever read this author, you will want to read everything he’s ever done.”

  —Bell Book & Candle

  The Red Heart “is rich in details of the Indian culture and filled with all those emotions that drive Thom’s other historical novels.… When it comes to telling stories about colliding cultures, James Alexander Thom is a master.”

  —Muncie Star Press (IN)

  A Ballantine Book

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1997 by James Alexander Thom

  Map copyright © 1997 by Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76313-6

  v3.1_r1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One: Frances

  November 1778–October 1779 Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Two: Good Face

  1784–1794 Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Three: Maconakwa

  1800–1813 Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part Four: Old Maconakwa

  1837–1847 Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  PROLOGUE

  March 6, 1847

  Valley of the Mississinewa, Indiana

  E heh yeh!

  The story is always going around. It is not before or after.

  E heh! Fire is in the center, and the drum. Old Maconakwa, Little Bear Woman, dances with her People again. They do not hate her, after all! If they did, they don’t now.

  She is happy. She is not outside from them. To be outside from them would be unhappiness. For a while she feared she was outside.

  She dances around the fire and the drum with the others. It is the thanksgiving dance for the maple sugar. Near the fire the ice melts in the ground. Her moccasins are wet and muddy, mud on the beads in flower designs, the leather dark with wet and mud, but her old feet feel only the dancing, not the cold, not the wet.

  That handsome métis at the drum with the Miami men is Brouillette, husband of her first daughter, Cut Finger, who is at home too sick to dance but wanted her mother to be here dancing. Brouillette is such a good man. As good a husband to Cut Finger as Deaf Man was to her.

  Maconakwa remembers Deaf Man as she dances. He was a breath away from death when she found him, but he lived and loved her forty more years. She was known as Wehletawash of the Lenapeh when she found him. Before that she was Frances, a little girl, a Quaker.

  Now she is Maconakwa, dancing with her Miamis in a woods in the center of her square mile of land. There are white men all around her land, but here in the center is the woods to hide the fire-glow. Whites have a place they call Hell, and they can go there, for all she cares. She is dancing with her People. Once her People could dance anywhere, but the white men all her life kept squeezing in. Now she can dance only in the middle of this square mile. This land is hers and the white men can’t take it from her because their own law said so. So her People, the few who weren’t sent away, they can always dance here. E heh!

  E heh yo nah

  Eh o weh

  Heh yo nah

  Eh yo weh heh

  Heh yo nah!

  Sung high, through their noses. The drum like a heartbeat, THAMP thamp, THAMP thamp.

  If the white farmers outside the square mile hear it, they’ll worry all night and try to get the sheriff to do something. E heh. Brouillette has spoken with the sheriff before of what the law is about her square mile of land. He showed the sheriff the Congress paper that said Maconakwa can always stay on this land. He told the sheriff the Congress law is above sheriff law and Maconakwa is not to be bothered. Brouillette talks strong.

  See this old Maconakwa dancing toe-heel, toe-heel, toe-heel around the fire, mud underfoot, stars overhead, hot maple sugar-sweet breath condensing in puffs as she dances on and on. She is far older than the other dancers. They grow tired, but she is not tired and never will be as long as the fire burns and the drum’s red heart beats. Her white relatives have papers that say she was born about seventy-four winters ago.

  White men are always counting. Everything, but mostly money.

  And time. Eh well!

  See this old woman dancing. Strong square jaw. Eyes wideset, glittering, blue-gray. A vermilion red dot on each cheekbone to show the Creator that this is one of His People. At the part in her hair is a line of vermilion. Her hair is white, but used to be bright red.

  The song changes.

  Eh o weh

  Eh o weh o weh

  Eh o weh

  Eh o weh o weh

  Eh o weh o weh o weh!

  A tortoiseshell rattle in her hand, deer hoof rattles tied under the knees of the old men dancing: tsh tschka tsh tschka tsh with the heartbeat drum. They are a raggedy, hiding-in-the-woods People, and just a few. Most of the People were herded out at the points of soldier bayonets and put on canal boats and sent beyond the Missi Sipu. A few, like Maconakwa, learned white man tricks and got to stay in the homeland, keep some land, raise cows, churn butter, plow land, wear cotton clothes, count money, keeping the old Sacred Ways only in their hearts.

  Like this.

  The raggedy hiding-in-the-woods ones, the only trick they knew was to step off the path into a thicket or dodge into a hollow sycamore tree or vanish into the water of the Mississinewa when the bluecoat bayonet soldiers weren’t looking. They loved their Miami People, but they couldn’t leave the Miami land because they didn’t believe they could be a Miami People anywhere else. These, Maconakwa thinks, are the real People. No government paper tricks, no special grants because of white blood in their veins, no sly money to the white men in charge. No, just wait till a soldier is looking the other way and vanish, and go hide on Maconakwa’s mile, or Palonswah’s, or Meshingomeshia’s. Just don’t go.

  Eh o weh

  Eh o weh o wehr />
  See this old woman Maconakwa dancing, never growing tired. A woolen shawl. Calico blouse and skirt and a belt with a knife sheath on it. Red and blue woolen leggings, very fancy, and the beaded moccasins. Seven pairs of earrings shivering and glittering with her steps around the fire. On her breast under her clothing, two tiny medicine bags hanging by thongs, one stitched together almost seventy years ago and given to her by a Lenapeh woman, the other made for her half a century ago by her friend Minnow, a medicine bag with hairs on it, made from a soldier’s scrotum. Maybe it is wrong to wear two medicine bags. The Old Ones knew, but they are dead and you can’t ask them.

  A medicine bag made from a scrotum. There are so many stories in the story of a life. The story of a life is round, like a circle, and always comes back around, and if you are of the People, there is always a fire in the center.

  Eh o weh o weh

  Eh o weh o weh o weh!

  The story started when she was a little girl in Pennsylvania with Quaker parents, on a winter day in their log house, and at the start of the story she was daydreaming, looking into a hearth fire. There is always a fire in the center of a story, and you go around and around the fire.

  PART ONE

  Frances

  November 1778–October 1779

  CHAPTER ONE

  November 1778

  Valley of the Susquehanna, Pennsylvania

  A gunshot and one angry shout sounded from outdoors, startling Frances from her daydream. The little girl glanced up from the glowing hearth embers to see whether her mother was alarmed. All of Ruth Slocum’s children had learned to read the face of their mother, who feared little.

  But Frances realized that her mother was not in the room. She must have carried the baby upstairs or out into the gray afternoon. Frances saw no one here but her lame brother Ebenezer and the took-in boy Wareham Kingsley; they both were standing stock-still by the staircase, mouths open, eyes boggling. Then Wareham Kingsley crouched and trembled. “It’s Indians!” he moaned. His father had been captured by Indians in a battle, and the boy was afraid all the time.

  “No,” Ebenezer said, hobbling toward the door to look out. Several voices were yelling and screaming out there now. “Indians don’t bother us. We’re Friends.”

  Frances’ heartbeat was racing, and Ebbie’s statement was no comfort; she had hardly heard him, the screams from outside were so piercing. She clambered off the hewn-log bench beside the table and ran to be near her brother. The drafty puncheon floor was rough and cold under her bare feet. The boy Wareham, rather than going toward the door, was skulking wild-eyed into the staircase nook.

  Frances, five years old, had been raised in serene faith that her family, being of the Society of Friends, were liked by all men, even Indians, and would never be hurt by them. But such faith was shaken by the sounds of terror beyond the door, and she was desperate for her mother.

  The log house had no windows; heavy plank doors front and back were its only lookouts onto the gray clearing, dead trees, river, distant forested hills. Ebenezer thumbed up the wooden latch, Frannie just behind him.

  Outside the front door was a sight so ghastly it stopped the breath in her throat.

  Wareham’s older brother Nathan, in his soldier suit, was lying facedown on the door path beside the grinding wheel. He was all reddened with blood.

  An Indian man was hunched over him slicing off the top of his head with a butcher knife.

  Ruth Slocum had actually smiled at the three Delawares when they first trotted into the clearing, because Indians had always come as peaceful visitors. Now, mere moments later, she was running from them, carrying her infant son Jonathan clutched to her side. She dodged stumps and tried to get away, but also hoped to draw the warriors’ attention away from her children. One of her first impulses was to flee around the cabin and up to the woodlot, where her husband and her father were cutting firewood, but they were unarmed, and she must not lead the warriors to them. So instead she raced down the long slope toward the river, where there were thickets and piles of brush to hide in.

  After the three warriors had come straight out of the woods, she remembered, one had paused to raise his musket and shoot Nathan Kingsley. The youth had lurched and fallen beside the grindstone. The warrior had snatched up the very knife Nathan had been sharpening, straddled his body, and cut off his scalp. It had been as bloody as a hog-butchering, but stunning in its quickness. It must have been because Nathan was wearing army clothes, she thought. Those who live by the sword …

  Ruth Slocum had run, even though she hoped that by killing the one in uniform they might have satisfied themselves, as all the Delawares knew her family were Quakers.

  But she saw now, off to her left, two of the warriors pursuing her nine-year-old daughter Mary, who was shrieking and running toward the woods in the direction of the distant fort, dragging behind her little Joseph, the three-year-old. Ruth Slocum stumbled to a halt and cried after them, “Joey! Mary!” but they seemed not to hear her over their own screaming, and ran on into the autumn-yellow woods.

  In the corner of her eye Ruth saw her one married daughter, Judith, running crouched toward another part of the riverside thickets carrying her baby brother Isaac; Ben, seven, ran ahead.

  Now the Delaware men were laughing. Ruth Slocum, panting, mouth agape, glanced around and saw that they had stopped near the cabin and were pointing in amusement at Mary and Joseph, who were thrashing so recklessly into the woods that the boy’s little breeches had torn loose and come down around his knees.

  In this curious pause in the midst of terror, Ruth Slocum, heart still slamming, baby squalling under her arm, tried to make an instantaneous tally of her children.

  Only two were in doubt; she had not seen Ebenezer or Frances. She seemed to remember that they had been in the cabin before the warriors came. Wareham Kingsley had been inside too. Surely they would have fled out the back door at once if they had seen Nathan Kingsley slain right out front. Perhaps all her children were safe, for this moment. The two warriors were returning to their comrade, who had tied Nathan’s scalp to his sash and was reloading his musket. Hoping not to attract their attention, Ruth Slocum muffled the baby’s shrieks against her bosom and sidestepped toward the thickets, trying to be invisible, craning to get a glimpse of her red-haired Frances and Ebenezer slipping away somewhere unharmed. Surely these Indians bore no malice to the Slocums. Surely they were only after soldiers—as soldiers should expect.

  Frances was whimpering in the darkness under the stairs, feeling the waves of tremors in Wareham’s body under her. She was still seeing in her mind the terrible scene of scalp-cutting. Then she became aware of her brother Ebenezer’s voice, sounding breathless and frightened.

  “… if thee wants anything, come take it … thee’s always welcome, but … please don’t hurt anyone …”

  And there were men’s voices and laughter, but Frances could not understand the Indian men’s words. She clutched her face with both hands to keep from crying aloud in terror.

  The Indians really were in the house! She could feel the thump of their footsteps through the wood of the floor, as well as Ebenezer’s scraping limp. He must be so brave, she thought, walking about with them and talking to them, after what they had done to Nathan. She did not know whether Wareham, huddled here in the dark under her now, had seen what they did to his brother.

  “… sugar in that crock there,” Ebenezer’s quavery voice was saying. “Does thee like sugar? There’s salt too …” And still the thumping footsteps. Now the stairs creaked, mere inches above her. Wareham groaned aloud, and Frances was sure the Indians would hear him. “Up there’s only clothes and bedding,” Ebenezer’s voice went on, “but thee’s welcome to whatever fits ’ee …” The Indians were talking in their own tongue, deep-voiced, occasionally laughing, and Frances could hear heavy things being scooted and dropped on the floors. She could hear no voices from outside the house, and she wondered where her mother could be. The little girl began
trembling even harder with a new onslaught of dread. She remembered something that had lately been in her bad dreams: some weeks ago one of her boy cousins from a distant farm had been carried away by Indians. Did they mean to do that to her?

  Now the stairs were creaking again right above her.

  “A heh!” one of the voices exclaimed.

  And then a hard hand grabbed her ankle and she was pulled roughly, feet first, from her hiding place. She saw just above her a painted face with no hair or eyebrows and a metal ring in the nose. At that moment Wareham wailed in terror right next to her.

  Her terror was so numbing that she wet herself and was flung out of her senses.

  Ruth Slocum’s whole attention at this moment was like a tense spiderweb covering the area of her children’s jeopardy, and like the mother spider, she sensed by feeling the web where each child was.

  She knew just where Judith and Ben and little Isaac were, a few yards upstream from her in a swampy thicket. She knew that Mary and Joseph would by now be almost at the edge of the clearing below the Wilkes-Barre fort, surely safe—unless there were more Indians than the three she had seen at the house.

  It was the plight of the children in the house that now screeched harsh in her soul. She was almost certain that son Ebenezer and little Frances were still in the house, and she had seen the painted warriors go in the front door.

  She was frozen between choices of action, wanting to run to the house and plead for her children and wanting to speed toward the fort and summon help. But the baby Jonathan cradled in her left arm was beginning to whimper and sob, either from the cold or in response to her own anguish, and he was the most helpless of them all. And the people in the fort would get warning enough when Mary and Joseph got there.

  So Ruth Slocum remained fixed, hiding in the underbrush, and she prayed with all her concentration, silently, staring at the log house in the clearing as if to penetrate its walls.