Free I Am Regina by Sally M. Keehn Page B

cuts, tied wooden buckets below the funnels and waited for the chill of night to cause the golden sap to run.
    Now, on this crisp morning with frost-covered leaves crackling beneath our feet, we gather the golden harvest. All of us wear deerskin leggings as well as skirts. Some wear bearskin robes; others, shawls of blanket cloth their husbands bought from traders. The tight buds on the trees tell us spring is near. But the clouds our breath makes in the air, the numbness in our fingers, tell us it’s still winter.
    I have lived here three moons now.
    I pour the sap into the large brass kettle which hangs from a spit over the fire that Woates has kindled. She stirs the sap with a wooden paddle. “Cold nights make the sap run freely,” she tells me. “Fire boils the sweet sap and makes it thick.”
    I dip my finger into my wooden bucket, cover my finger with golden sap and lick it clean. The sweet taste makes me hungry. This winter, Tiger Claw has caught fox and beaver and I have helped Woelfin prepare the pelts for trading. But Tiger Claw has brought us little meat.
    Nonschetto knows how much I hate to club the little mice and rats. When Clear Sky brings her bear and deer meat, she shares it with Quetit, Woelfin and me. In return for her kindness, I teach her white man’s words she can use in bartering with traders. Soon, she will leave me. By canoe, she and Clear Sky will travel to the river forks to trade furs for brass kettles, blanket cloth, knives and beads. I don’t want her to leave.
    Nonschetto pours her bucket of sap into the kettle. “Remember the sugar camp?” she asks Woates.
    â€œAaaii! I remember. We traveled three nights to get there. My legs ached with walking! And my arms from building shelters! This village is in a good place, for it is near the sugar trees and stream.”
    â€œWhere did you live before?” I ask the women.
    Nonschetto points in the direction of the rising sun. “We lived there ... maybe three nights travel from this village. But the firewood was scarce. The ground was rocky. It soon tired of growing corn.”
    â€œI have known six villages,” Woates says.
    â€œI have known five.” Nonschetto stares into the boiling sap, as if she were recalling all the places she has been.
    â€œWill we move away from here?” I ask, the thought of leaving disturbing me. I have mapped the location of our village from scraps of knowledge the Indians have given me. It lies northeast of where the Tuscarora and Muskingum rivers meet. White men trade with Indians there. At night, I pray that these white men will discover a stream. Follow it here. Trade a kettle for one useless girl. Take me away from Tiger Claw and Woelfin.
    â€œWe will stay here many winters,” Nonschetto says. “Wood is plentiful and the ground is strong.”
    Relieved, I stare at the sap bubbling in the kettle. Soon it will thicken and turn dark. Then we will pour it into flat wooden dishes where it will harden into sugar. I cannot think of the name the white man called the sugar tree. I used to know it.
    I used to know many things. But now my memories fade like leaves plucked from a tree. At night, when I try to picture my family: the way my mother smiled, the mischievous twinkle in John’s eyes when he was about to do something he shouldn’t, Barbara’s saucy way of tossing her hair; all I see are shadows, like those the fire casts in our hut. Frightening memories no longer burn my mind, but neither do the good ones soothe it.
    Several days later, on an afternoon when Nonschetto and I are alone together, gathering firewood by the stream, I share this loss with her, for I feel as if a part of me has died.
    Nonschetto picks up a branch and points to a large tree stump. Delicate green branches sprout from the trunk, defying the efforts of a woodsman to destroy the tree. “You are like this tree,” Nonschetto tells me. “Your roots run deep. You