A String of Beads Read Online Free Page A

treaty letting
     the Senecas retain roughly two hundred thousand acres of land in this single plot.
     During the next half century, a cabal of prominent New York businessmen formed a land
     company and stole legal ownership of the reservation with the help of federal Indian
     agents who were openly on their payroll. The Tonawanda Senecas, led by the clan mothers,
     could only repurchase eight thousand acres. What was left was mainly swampy lowlands
     and second-growth forest, but various parts had been farmed as long as the land had
     been occupied.
    Jane drove through Akron to Bloomingdale Road, then to Hopkins Road. The houses she
     passed were all ones she had known since she was born. She knew the people who owned
     them, and knew the complicated network of kinship that connected one family with another
     throughout the reservation, and even some of the connections with people from other
     Haudenosaunee reservations in New York and Canada. Jane turned and drove up to the
     house on Sand Hill Road that belonged to the Sanders family. She stopped her white
     Volvo beside the road and studied the place for a few seconds. There had always, for
     Jane, been a profound feeling of calm in the silence of the reservation. The thruway
     and major highways were too many miles away to be heard. The roads on the reservation
     didn’t allow for much traffic, and didn’t lead anywhere that big trucks wanted to
     go. Today the only sounds were birdsongs and the wind in the tall trees.
    The Sanders house was old, but it had a fresh coat of white paint on it, and Jane
     was glad to see the shingle roof was recent too. Jane got out and headed for the wooden
     steps to the porch. She had always loved the thick, ancient oak that dominated the
     yard and shaded the house, so she patted its trunk as she passed. She remembered how
     she and Jimmy had made up stories about it when they played together as children.
     They agreed that a great sachem had been buried on this spot thousands of years ago,
     and an acorn planted above his heart had sprouted into this tree. They decided that
     the buried sachem’s power inhabited the tree, and so the tree had always protected
     the family from harm.
    The front door of the house opened while Jane was still climbing the steps, and Mattie
     Sanders came out. “Jane?” she said. “You’re looking wonderful.”
    “So are you, Mattie. All I did was grow taller.”
    Mattie Sanders hugged Jane tightly. She was about five feet nine inches tall, with
     long, thick hair that had been jet black when Jane had come here as a child. Now it
     was hanging down her back in a loose silver ponytail, the way Jane wore hers to do
     housework. “If you came to see Jimmy, I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”
    “I heard about his troubles yesterday,” Jane said. “I came to see you.”
    “Well, then, come on inside.” Mattie looked up and around her at the sky and the trees.
     “Or we could sit out here if you’d like.”
    “Out here would be nice,” Jane said. “It’s such a spectacular day.”
    “Yes,” said Mattie. “Of course, I see a day like this, and I hope that Jimmy’s somewhere
     getting the benefit of it. It could still get cold and wet even at this time of year.”
    They went to a small round table on the porch under the roof, and Jane sat in one
     of the four chairs. She thought about how pleasant this spot was during a late spring
     or summer rain, and felt sorry for Jimmy.
    Mattie went through the screen door into the small kitchen. She would feel compelled
     to observe the ancient customs, so Jane knew she would be back with food and drinks,
     just as Jigonsasee had, six or seven hundred years ago when Deganawida and Hiawatha—the
     historical one, not the Ojibway hero Longfellow later used in a poem and gave Hiawatha’s
     name—had stopped at her dwelling beside the trail. Jane sat alone and listened to
     the chickadees and finches calling to each other in the big old trees. Mattie