The Dredge Cycle

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Toward the end of Pat’s book, Wee­t­a­moo has some hard con­cerns about writ­ing, itself. Young Meta­com has learned to write the fig­ure A. He pro­nounces it for her, and explains the white men’s util­ity in writ­ing  –  and the Indian need, there­fore, to be con­ver­sant in it. I had to stop read­ing a while after I saw her response: …What if, when­ever we wanted a story, we could just reach out and read it from a paper, instead of wait­ing for the right time and place and…

Next Levels of Dramatic Irony

Your expe­ri­ence as a stan­dard reader: Toward the end of Pat’s ren­di­tion of Weetamoo’s diary, the sachem-​​​​to-​​​​be is finally called for her adult­hood rite. The year is 1654. She’s been antic­i­pat­ing it most of the book; she’ll spend sev­eral days and nights in a sweat­lodge, tend­ing a fire and wait­ing for con­tact from the non­ma­te­r­ial world. In her two visions, a deer she’d uncer­e­mo­ni­ously killed leads her through the win­ter night to an impor­tant fish­ing area to the Pocas­set, down­stream from a water­fall. The sec­ond night, the deer…

I miss you, Pat

I’m read­ing my late editor’s Wee­t­a­moo (pro­nounced Weh-​​​​táh-​​​​moh) book, Heart of the Pocas­sets. It’s a heavily-​​​​researched, 95% imag­ined diary of the Pocas­set sachem at 14. Pat wrote it for Scholas­tic, for those lucky eighth-​​​​graders with an Indian His­tory unit. It’s sim­ple and refresh­ing, if light-​​​​weight for my needs. An easy lit­tle recap after the over-​​​​saturated and dis­turb­ing Mayflower. Weetamoo’s par­ents man­date that she find time each day to learn patience. Because the his­tor­i­cal Wee­t­a­moo didn’t read or write (her cul­ture didn’t use those tech­nolo­gies) it’s a…

So Many Questions

Almost done with Mayflower. Help­ing me: I know a tremen­dous amount more about the region and the 17^th cen­tury than when I started. Not help­ing me: the absence of infor­ma­tion about the area I’m most inter­ested in. This morn­ing I’m look­ing for a map (or five) of tribal lands in 1605 (and 1620, 1650, 1675, 1690). I just want to know the names of what and who the hell I’m look­ing for. This absence of acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion may be a core moti­va­tion of my book, but…