Free Chesapeake by James A. Michener

finding themselves with an unprecedented victory and also a score of captives, did not know what to do with either. Unaccustomed to war other than the retreats it caused, they had no concept of what one did with prisoners, and when Pentaquod explained that in the north his Susquehannocks followed three courses of action, they listened attentively. ‘The wounded we kill. The strong we turn into slaves. The swift we send back to their people with insulting messages.’
    The villagers nodded approval of these suggestions, completely unaware of what they entailed, but their werowance continued, ‘However, we wounded no one, so there are none to kill.’ Most of them saw the common sense of this judgment, and indeed applauded it because they had no taste for killing. ‘We do not need slaves, because there is no work for them to do, and if we made work, we would also have to make meals for them.’ This, too, was irrefutable. ‘And I do not think we ought to send insulting messages to the Nanticokes. We want them for our friends, not our enemies.’
    To some, this was a surprising verdict. Many, especially those who had not participated in the battle, desired to humiliate their enemy and had devised clever ways for doing so; they were disgusted that Pentaquod should preach conciliation, but he received support from a strange quarter.
    Two young warriors who had stood behind the first tree where the traps were sprung confessed that they had been terrified, and that if even one thing had gone wrong, they would have been surrounded and killed, ‘it is much better for the Nanticokes to come as friends,’ they reasoned. ‘Let us feast the prisoners and talk with them and send them south with our respect.’
    As soon as the words were spoken Pentaquod cried, ‘Let us do just that!’ and his counsel prevailed, and the feast was held with goose and deer and yams and baked fish and pumpkin sweetened with the juice of cornstalks, and tobacco was smoked in long pipes which passed from hand to hand. One of the Nanticokes of good family said at the conclusion, ‘We will inform our people that we are no longer enemies,’ and the sun rose before the new friends parted.
    This dramatic change of affairs created a feeling of profound excitement in the village, and talk became heady. ‘Never again will we desert our village to the Nanticokes. We have proved that we can fight better than those fools. One of these days we’ll march south to their villages, and they’ll see what a change has occurred.’
    Pentaquod took no notice of this bombast; he recognized it as the boastfulness which Susquehannock warriors had engaged in when he was a boy, but when he heard his people tell one another that the entire system of the world was altered by their victory, he became worried. And when they boasted that next time the Susquehannocks marched down from the north there would be war, he called a halt.
    ‘The Susquehannocks are not Nanticokes,’ he warned. ‘Not one of our tricks would fool them, because they are Susquehannock tricks, and they use them against their enemies.’ He harangued them for an extended period, and then a happy metaphor came to him. Lowering his voice and leaning forward to face his enthusiastic warriors, he told them, ‘Amongthe Susquehannocks, I was a small man.’ His height was so great as he said this, his torso so much broader than theirs, that they could only gasp.
    ‘What shall we do when they come again?’ they asked, subdued.
    ‘We shall cross the river, hide our canoes and go into the swamps,’ he said, and into the swamps he led them.
    In the decade that followed—1586–1595 by western calendar—Pentaquod became the best werowance his people had ever known. He was a tall, courageous, kindly man serving among a small, frightened people. When his tribe went east to the Great Waters, he led the way and carried his share of the burdens, and on the rare occasions when they had to flee into the southern