The Ransom of Mercy Carter by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-89923-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Kahnawake

April 20, 1704

Temperature 56 degrees

The town was Kahnawake and the river was the St. Lawrence: no soft Massachusetts brook but a thundering expanse, with constant traffic of pirogues, bateaux, dugouts and canoes bound for Montréal, a few miles downstream. There were French voyageurs and Dutch traders, Ottawa and Menominee Indians, Sauk and Winnebago, Potawatomi and Fox bringing their furs from the far west.

After so terrible a winter came an early spring. In canoes that held ten men, the Indians began coming as soon as the ice broke, bringing thousands of beaver pelts. Home they went, loaded with firearms and ammunition, brass and copper, jewelry and dresses for their wives, their paddles slicing vigorously through the water.

But that was the river and the city of Montréal.

In Kahnawake, the week following the captives’ arrival was marked by nothing at all.

In Deerfield, men would have been out of bed before dawn, coming home for dinner at noon and for supper after dark, lamenting what had not been accomplished. The women would have woven and quilted, mended and cooked and scrubbed. Every child had chores: sewing, stirring, tending animals, minding babies. Then came Bible reading and prayers and at last, the exhausted collapse into sleep.

But here in Kahnawake, nobody did anything. Every now and then, one of the women started another pot of stew, and every now and then, somebody wandered by and ate some. The children played, the men smoked, the women talked and the babies napped.

“They are so lazy,” said Ruth. “It is sinful.”

Mercy felt dizzy rather than lazy. From the hard labor of Deerfield, she had passed through the ordeal of the march and fallen into what? Standing around, staring around, and eating.

The girls were at the bake ovens used by all the women of Kahnawake, dipping thin crisp corn cakes, hot off the pan, into thick maple syrup. Mercy could have eaten a hundred. She licked her fingers.

Around the girls were barns and shacks and pens for the animals. Between them and the river were more than fifty houses, arranged in loose rows, each holding two families or more. There were hundreds of dogs, hundreds of children, dozens of horses and almost twenty captives. Except for Sally and Benjamin Burt, not one of the captives at Kahnawake was an adult. Nobody knew where the parents had been taken or even if any had survived.

Behind the houses stretched fields to be planted with corn. “If you can imagine these people stirring themselves enough to plant seeds,” snorted Ruth.

Closer was another field, avoided by the Indians, who yelled if anybody stepped in it while it was soft and muddy. It was nearly a mile long and a hundred yards wide, and Mercy had not figured out what made it special.

Every day Mass was celebrated, some days by Father Meriel and some days by other priests. Mass washed over her like morning fog over the river, and like fog, it burned off during the day. It had nothing in common with the services and sermons of Mr.

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