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as the years pass we have managed to forget.’ He indicated that he was not happy to have a stranger to the tribe revive those distant fears and he would say no more.
    By prudent questioning, Pentaquod satisfied himself that all members of the tribe believed that the Great Canoe had indeed come to the mouth of the river, that it was huge in size, that it moved without paddles. One old woman added to the story: ‘It was white on top, brown at the bottom.’
    Pentaquod carried the disquieting news with him as they penetrated deeper into the swamp, and when they reached relatively solid ground on which they could camp, he went to the werowance and asked bluntly, ‘What did you think, Orapak, when you saw the Great Canoe?’
    The old man sucked in his breath, then sat down beneath an oak. He reflected on what he should reply to this penetrating question, knowing that it cut to the heart of his tribe’s existence, then said slowly, ‘I cannot come into the marshes again. I find it too exhausting and know that my time for death is at hand. You must be the next werowance.’
    ‘I did not ask about that, Orapak.’
    ‘But this is the significant answer to what you did ask.’
    Of this Pentaquod could make no sense, but the old leader continued, ‘When we gathered on the shore that day to see the Great Canoe as it moved slowly north, all of us saw the same thing. You are probably aware of that from the questions you’ve been asking.’
    Pentaquod nodded. He was convinced that this tribal memory was no mere chant composed by some imaginative ancestor like Scar-chin. Satisfied on this point, the old man went on, ‘When the others had seen the Canoe, and assured themselves that it was real, they returned home, but my grandfather, the werowance then, took my father and me along the shore, and we were hiding in the forest when the Canoe came close, and we saw that it contained men much like us and yet much different.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘Their skins were white. Their bodies were of some different substance, for the sun glistened when it struck.’
    That was all the old man knew, and since none of the others had told him of these startling facts, he realized that this was privileged knowledge, to be possessed only by the succession of werowances. In sharing this sacred knowledge of the glistening bodies, Orapak was passing along to Pentaquod the burden of leadership. He did not need to warn that no mention must be made of what the Great Canoe actually contained, for it was clear that one day it must return, bringing the enigma of men with white skins and bodies that reflected sunlight.
    ‘They will come back, won’t they?’ Pentaquod asked.
    ‘They will.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Every day of my life I have risen from my bed with one question: Is this the day they will return? Now that burden is yours. You will neverplace your head upon the sleeping reeds without wondering: Will they come tomorrow?’
    They buried the canny old werowance, a craven who had lost his village a score of times but never a man in battle, deep in the swamps away from the river he had loved. From his tired, worn body they removed the copper disk symbolic of leadership, proffering it to Pentaquod, but he refused, for such disks of authority were not part of the Susquehannock ritual. Instead he planted three tall turkey feathers in his hair, so that he towered even more conspicuously over his little charges, and Scar-chin recited his epic of how the new werowance had once defeated the Nanticokes single-handed. And so this tribe became the next in that strange procession of nations who choose as their leader someone who is not even a member of their tribe.
    The first test of Pentaquod’s leadership came when the Nanticokes marched north on their traditional raid. The women assumed that the tribe would flee north in the accustomed manner, but some of the younger warriors, infected by Scar-chin’s epic, believed they should stand and fight. ‘With Pentaquod to