Puritan Girl, Mohawk Girl by John Demos

Author:John Demos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

MOHAWK GIRL

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TRAGEDY STRIKES

For the next few years, A’ongote’s life followed a quiet track. She had become like any other Kahnawàke girl, enjoying her family, helping out in the longhouse and the fields, playing with her friends.

She had no way to know how hard John Williams and many others among the English were trying to reach out and bring her back to Massachusetts. Letters were sent to the French governor, and merchants who went to Canada always asked about her. But the Mohawks were more determined than ever to keep her as one of their own, so they didn’t answer. And she had no wish to leave.

Her life from day to day was spent mostly with the women and girls. Weeks went by when the men of the village were gone—on the winter hunt, for example, or to make more raids against the English. At such times she missed Arakwente; after all, he had been her first caretaker among the Mohawks. Most of the time, of course, he was in the village. He never stayed overnight with Konwatieni and the rest of the family because it was the custom for Mohawk men to live at the homes of their mothers even after they married. But he came every day to visit, and to make sure everything was all right.

In fact, A’ongote could see that the women ran the village. The cabins belonged to them, and the fields too; they were in charge of almost all property. Children belonged to the mother’s family, not the father’s. The leaders of the village government—the chiefs—were men, but the women held meetings of their own to give their opinions. On some matters, such as when to go to war or what to do with captives, they were the ones to decide. Women even chose the chiefs. A’ongote now understood that it was Konwatieni, not Arakwente, who had adopted her into their family. If she remembered anything from her earliest years, she might have realized that women had a more important role among the Mohawks than they did among the Massachusetts Puritans.

Kahnawàke women were also important as traders at local markets. From time to time they would go into Montreal, a large French town just across the river, with furs, corn, or deer hides to exchange with French merchants for iron pots, woolen blankets, and glass beads. Konwatieni was one of the women who did this. And it was she who, without knowing it, brought tragedy upon the village. On a hot summer day, while walking through the Montreal market, she passed a sailor fresh off a boat from France. He stopped, turned, and begged her for a drink of water. She let him take a few gulps from a flask she was carrying and then hurried on. But the sailor was ill with smallpox, the most terrible disease in those days. So a bit later, when she drank from the same flask, she, too, became infected. She returned to the village as usual, suspecting nothing because the symptoms didn’t develop right away.

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