Chrétien de Parthenay
New France
The days began to bleed into one another, and for that Chrétien was thankful. It was a welcome change, to have a routine, to know what was coming each day. Every morning started in the same way—in its earliest hours, before the sun rose, he and his fellow soldiers would wake, and leave the confines of the fort. Behind the fort’s back walls lay a small plot of farmland that this company had created themselves to avoid the bland and nutritionless rations of porridge that were fed to the other marines.
Every soldier in the Deer-Tender company, Chrétien included, spent the first two hours of each morning tending to the three crops grown here: squash, beans, and corn. They were all grown together on that same plot, which was the complete opposite from the farms in France. Though Chrétien had never worked on a farm, he picked the skills up rather quickly, and even enjoyed it. He owed this in part to his two teachers: Jikohnsasee and Gyantwaka. The two Deer-Tenders could not have been more different in their teaching methods–Jikohnsasee preferred to bark orders at him, and call him out in explicit detail whenever he did anything wrong. Gyantwaka took a more patient approach, walking him through each step and explaining the reasons behind everything they did.
In this case, these Three Sisters, as the Deer Folk called these crops, were grown together because they helped one another. Gyantwaka explained that the stalks of the corn gave the beans something tall to grow around, and in turn the beans helped keep the cornstalks stable when the winds were fierce. The squash carried thorns in their stems that kept pests away, and the kind they had planted could last well into the winter when corn could not.
“Every living thing has power inside it,” the old man told Chrétien. “These things are not just tsyunhehkwa–they do not grow and die for the sole purpose of sustaining us. By eating them, we absorb some of their energy into us. In your language you might call it a soul—in our tongue we call it orenda. But the concepts themselves are very different—you Europeans view the world through a selfish lens. You believe each of you carries a singular soul within you, tied to yourself and isolated from everything else until you die. But that is not the truth—the world is more interconnected than that. A man’s orenda is inseparable from the orenda of the people around him, or from the animals he hunts, or the vegetables he eats. Look at how the Three Sisters grow, how they help each other. If they were selfish like the French and the Dutch, they would wither in this place with poor soil, so close to the winter. The grasping vines of beans would find no purchase above them, the corn would collapse from the breeze, and the squash would falter in such lonely soil. It is through cooperation, then, through using your strengths to shore up others’ weaknesses, that everyone may thrive.”
Chrétien didn’t know how much of what the old man said was true, but he was sure of one thing–he had never felt as energized as after eating the Three Sisters. After tending to the garden, the soldiers took the Sisters they harvested into the kitchen. Jikohnsasee commanded the kitchen, ruling it like other things with an iron fist, barking orders at her subordinates to maintain an orderly and efficient system. Corn was given highest priority to cook, as they were harvesting the last of it now with the winter so close. Then came beans, as the winter squash could keep and last through the cold months (as its name suggested). Right now, the succotash they made for each meal consisted of a mixture of all three, but would be reduced to just beans and squash once the winter came.
Though in Chonnonton culture it was custom for women to farm and cook, the company eschewed this tradition due to there being a single woman in the whole fort. Jikohnsasee took her role as the sole female very seriously—Gyantwaka explained that in their culture, women not only performed all the most important roles of the village, such as farming and cooking, but were also the ones to make decisions regarding just about everything–where to send the men to fight, who their children could marry. Thus Jikohnsasee led her company with a fierce pride that a French woman would never be allowed. Chrétien wished Anne-Marie would be here to behold the woman, that she might impart a small fraction of her ambition and fervor on his hapless sister.
The soldiers cooked all their meals for the day in the morning–excess rations would be reheated for lunch and supper later. The succotash filled each of them with an immense energy unlike anything Chrétien had ever felt, lending some credence to Gyantwaka’s belief that they were absorbing the vegetables’ orenda. And they would need that energy, too, for the next ten hours of the day would be spent performing constant drills and combat exercises to prepare them for the coming war.
The first snow was almost at their doorstep, and Chrétien could not have felt less prepared. Despite having been raised from birth to be a military commander, he found his training meant almost nothing here. The tactics he had spent countless hours as a boy memorizing, for example, were developed around companies of cavalry on horseback or coordinated volleys of gunfire from soldiers standing in wide lines. While these tactics were effective in the open battlefields and hills of Western Europe, they had no purpose in the dense forests of these lands. The drills the soldiers practiced emulated the way fights would take shape here–close-quarters, fast-paced, and chaotic. While Chrétien considered himself a good swordsman, all his teaching had been geared towards winning duels one-on-one against other noblemen that took quarrel with him. Now, he sparred against two or three Chonnonton warriors at once, because a two-person duel was an exceeding rarity on the battlefield.
In the beginning, Chrétien failed miserably. He was still recovering from his fight with Tadodaho, and was wholly unused to the physical demand of Jikohnsasee’s training. As the weeks went on, though, he grew in both ability and confidence. While he still was not close to emerging victorious, he could now score what would be a fatal blow with a real weapon on one of his fellow soldiers before one of them scored on him. In fact, this was his stated goal and intention, one given to him by Jikohnsasee. Even if he was as old as most of the other warriors, he would still not win if outnumbered. So the goal then became to kill one, and try to retreat immediately.
This goal was one adopted by all the soldiers in the company, for two main reasons. The first was due to the way the Iroquois waged war. Jikohnsasee explained that the Iroquois were incredibly methodical in the way they approached a battle, because their purpose behind fighting was to try and capture their defeated foes to replace their own members who had died. As a result, any losses they suffered would be taken far more severely than they would in a European battle. If a fight broke out between a hundred Iroquois and a hundred French marines, for example, and the Iroquois lost fifty of their members, they would consider it an unequivocal defeat, even if they killed every single marine. The battles Chrétien had been schooled on were large, sweeping affairs often fought to the death. Fighting with the Iroquois, by contrast, would be broken up into a series of smaller skirmishes, for the Iroquois tended to attack, flee and retreat after suffering enough losses, only to attack again soon after, whittling down their enemies’ numbers through persistent and frequent ambushes.
The second was due to an uncomfortable truth, one each soldier in the company had come to terms with. War was deadly, deadlier in these lands than it ever had been ever since the rifle was introduced. If Chrétien was fortunate, he would survive until the end of the campaign, but survival would be owed more to chance and luck than fighting prowess. Even the mightiest warriors were eventually outnumbered, or shot from behind, or assaulted at night while they slept. The best any of them could do then, in such a situation, is to try to make the fight winnable for their brothers-in-arms. Thus, if Chrétien could kill one Iroquois warrior before the others killed him, the battle would become that much easier for his comrades once he fell. It was a macabre reality to grapple with, so different from the lofty ideals of conquest and glory he was spoon-fed as a boy. Still, adopting this mindset and striving every day towards it brought him closer to his comrades, something Chrétien was determined to do if he was ever to lead them in Jikohnsasee’s stead.
The training was broken up into two five-hour sessions, with an hour in between them to eat and rest. Chrétien did not spend his lunch hour idly, however. He knew each minute was precious, and so he spent his lunch working while he ate to translate what he had been taught of military tactics to this new frontier. While the tactics themselves did not function here, the philosophies behind them could be adapted to their advantage.
For example, every noble boy by the age of ten would know that the best way to defeat a cavalry charge is with infantry armed with pikes or halberds. The goal of cavalry was often to try and outmaneuver the infantry, attacking from the flanks or behind where the spears were not pointed. When faced with this threat, then, the spear infantry should adapt a hollow square formation rather than a usual line, with all four sides of that square pointing their spears outwards in a different direction, leaving no part unprotected. While there was no cavalry here, Chrétien suggested using a similar tactic if ambushed by all sides by the Iroquois, as the effect would be the same with bayonets if they were close enough to fight in melee.
Every time he suggested one of these tactics to Jikohnsasee, to his surprise, she listened, taking heed of everything he said and suggesting alternatives or changes based on her knowledge of fighting the Iroquois. After their first meeting, Chrétien considered her to be a hot-headed and reckless woman whose fierce pride would be her Achilles’ heel. What he discovered, however, was that she was deeply considerate and serious about defeating the Iroquois, and would swallow all her pride if it meant emerging victorious in this winter campaign. Though she considered Chrétien to be a foolish boy who was clueless when it came to New World warfare, she still listened to his counsel when he tried adapting his learned tactics based on her knowledge.
Oftentimes, he would come to her with a new idea or tactic, and they would spend the rest of the lunch hour discussing its potential strengths and weaknesses, often spending the next few lunches ironing the details out until both of them were satisfied. Once finalized, Jikohnsasee would incorporate it into their training, working with Chrétien to instruct the soldiers on the motions. It was this symbiosis that began to kindle a growing respect between the two commanders, and with the other Deer warriors as well. Chrétien provided his years of military schooling and a symbol of French leadership to placate the non-indigenous companies in the fort, while Jikohnsasee provided her veteran knowledge of practical fighting and the existing trust all the soldiers in the company had for her. The soldiers played their part as well, drilling tirelessly each day and supporting one another through every hardship. Stalk of corn, vine of bean, and thorn of squash.
After the last drill, the soldiers bathed together in the lake, washing the sweat of the day off their bodies. Though some of the rivers nearby had started to freeze, the great lakes that the Deer-Tenders called seas would not solidify for another two or three months. Still, baths at this time of year were increasingly short affairs, with the soldiers jumping into the frigid waters as briefly as they could to keep themselves clean and refreshed. At first, Chrétien found it strange to share these baths with Jikohnsasee, but she was just another soldier at the end of the day, and none of the others ever snuck looks at her.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Then was supper. Despite all of their meals consisting of the same dish, Chrétien did not tire of it, for it was more delicious and nutrient-filled than the entrees his chef served him back in Parthenay. What he did miss were French desserts–Calissons and Soufflés and Mendiants–God, what he would do for a Mendiant on Christmas Eve. He tried his best to describe them to his fellow soldiers, who he had gotten to know well enough over enough dinner-time conversations, despite the language barrier. He made an explicit effort to learn each of the names of his two dozen comrades, and commit them to memory. He would not be a commander like his father or Le Vicomte, who viewed their subordinates as expendable playthings to throw at the enemy. At the same time, he was wary of overfamiliarity, as getting too close to any one of them would make it all the more difficult if they fell in battle. It was a tender and strange balance to strike, and Chrétien could not help growing close with each of his comrades as the weeks went on, despite his best attempts to keep them at arm’s length. It was nice for a change to belong, to have brothers-in-arms to share in every triumph and hardship. It was something, Chrétien realized, he had never truly experienced.
After supper, the other warriors in the company quickly collapsed onto their beds, their bellies filled with food and their bodies exhausted from the day. But Chrétien’s day was not over. He was not content enough to fight alongside his Deer comrades—he had been appointed to lead them, and he was determined to earn that leadership. Every evening he crept into a small attachment next to the barracks, which Gyantwaka had fashioned into a doctor’s office, being the only one with any sort of medical training in the fort. There, the old man would regale the boy of the history and lore of these lands. Chrétien knew that if he was ever to lead these men who were so different in culture and upbringing than him, that he would need to understand those differences. More than that, though, he found himself enraptured by the elder’s yarns, fascinated by an intricate world with a depth his fellow Frenchman had written off as the ramblings of uncivilized savages.
He had learned, for example, that Jikohnsasee was named for her famous ancestor, like the dynasties of different Louises and Charleses that ruled France for centuries. This ancestor, Gyantwaka said, was a wise woman, who as her name suggested in their tongue, lived on a road that was tread by warriors of different tribes on their way to war. The elder Jikohnsasee would welcome these warriors into her home, regardless of their tribe or allegiance, and thus her hearth-fire became a melting pot of different peoples, all agreeing to remain neutral while under her roof. It was here that the renowned Iroquois hero known as the Great Peacemaker took his first steps into achieving the treaty he was named for, working with Jikohnsasee and the orator Hiawatha to broker a peace between the five tribes that would eventually form the Iroquois confederacy.
“There were two main obstacles Deganawidah faced,” Gyantwaka explained. “The first was a personal one. The Great Peacemaker could not speak well–he was born with what we would call today an impediment. This of course would be a death knell for any would-be diplomat, but the Great Peacemaker found an ally in Hiawatha. He was a wild man when the Peacemaker found him, murderer and cannibal, but Deganawidah spoke to him of his plan for a grand alliance and of the virtues of peace, and Hiawatha was suaded. He proved to be a brilliant orator, and eventually became a chief of the Onontake tribe. The two worked together, spreading their message of peace to the Onontake first.
“The second obstacle was the same one you faced when you came here. For the principal chief of the Onontake and leader of all of them was named Tadodaho. He was a wicked man with fire in his eyes and venomous snakes in his hair. Hiawatha, in fact, was given that name by the Peacemaker. In our tongue it means “A man who combs”, an aspirational name so that he may comb the snakes from Tadodaho’s hair and smoothen the tangles of his twisted mind. Hiawatha spoke at many councils held by the Onontake, but Tadodaho thwarted his attempts at every turn. Tadodaho was also an agotkon—it is a word both for the spirits in the sky world, and the powerful people who can commune with them. You would call him a witch, and a powerful one at that, with a mighty orenda. Now, not all those gifted with magic use it for evil purposes, and have different roles and abilities. I, for example, am a saokata—I commune with the spirits to determine the nature of peoples’ illnesses, and to heal them. Tadodaho used his magic only to inflict harm on others, and so he cursed the peace-broker Hiawatha’s family. One by one, each of them died–his wife and three daughters. Stricken with grief and fearing for his life, Hiawatha fled to the Kanienʼkehá꞉k Flint-Wielders, where Deganadiwah had been working tirelessly to convince them of peace.
"The Flint chiefs did not harbor the same wickedness as Tadodaho, and agreed to work towards peace. They traveled to the other nations to convince them as well, working together as you work with Jikohnsasee. Whenever they traveled, they stayed with her ancestor at her peace-home, and she provided words of insight to help convince the other nations. It was her idea that eventually led to Tadodaho relenting, which was to suggest that he would become the first principal chief of all Five Nations. This stoked his ego, and though he was originally still inclined towards war and destruction, a great eclipse blackened the sky, a foreboding omen from the heavens to accept the peace deal. So they created the Great Law of Peace, and the Five Nations have cooperated with each other ever since. To pay him homage, the principal chief of the Onontake is always granted the name Tadodaho, which is not their birth name, but a title they bear when they assume their station. He is considered the most powerful of all the grand chiefs, and is the one to have the final word in important decisions.”
Gyantwaka turned to his desk, drawing something on a piece of paper. He showed it to Chrétien. It was a rendition of France’s flag–a deep blue background, with three fleurs-de-lis to represent the holy trinity.
“This is your flag, yes? The banner that represents your nation’s identity. The Haudenosaunee have their own, only it is not a flag, but a belt, made from wampum. We do not write our treaties on paper in ink, but with patterns in wampum.”
He made a second drawing on the same paper. It was a long rectangular belt with five shapes across it, each of them connected by a single line. Two squares on each outermost side, followed by two rectangles, and the shape of what looked like a pine tree or arrowhead in the middle.
“This is the treaty all five nations signed with the help of Deganadiwah, Jikohnsasee, and Hiawatha. Each shape represents one of the tribes. The eastern and western squares, as you might guess, represent the Keepers of the Eastern and Western doors, Kanienʼkehá and Onödowá’ga. The rectangles, then, are Onyota'a:ka and Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ. In the middle lies the tribe of Tadodaho that tied the whole confederacy together: Onoñda’gegá,or as we call them Onontake or Onontaerrhonon.”
“But you said the Great Peacemaker did not come from any of the five Iroquois tribes, but from the Huron–sorry, I mean the Wendat, who lived in this area, and Jikohnsasee is from your tribe, who are not Iroquois either. Why did neither of their peoples join the Five Nations?”
“A good question, and one with two answers. The first is that neither the Wendat nor the Chonnonton needed to be brought to peace at the time, for it was mainly the Five Nations who were warring against each other. We are taught that Deganawidah was the son of Tarachiawagon, the mightiest of spirits who holds up the sky world. It was his duty from birth to bring peace to the Five Nations, and not to the Wendat, despite him being born among them. The other reason is that neither nation would not consider allying themselves with any of what were then lesser tribes. While that might seem ridiculous now, given that the Haudenosaunee are still here while both our nations lie in ruin, when I was a young boy, the Five Nations were the smallest and least powerful confederacy of the three. All three confederacies are very similar to one another–we all speak the same tongue, more or less, and we share the same religious and cultural teachings, but we do not consider each other the same people. You could consider each tribe in the Five Nations brothers, with the Wendat and Chonnonton being half-brothers–same ancestral father, but different mothers, and thus different clans and lineages. This is, in fact, why the Five Nations targeted us first for their Mourning Wars, as we were the best candidates to replace their dead, being already so familiar with their customs.”
“Do they really replace them? Like directly?”
“Yes. They bring you to their village, beating and torturing you, some to death. The few that manage to survive the many ordeals they suffer are adopted, forced to abandon their names and identities and don new ones. Though some villages have altered their method slightly in recent years, mainly due to needing too many people to replace to care about all the intricacies. I have heard rumors that some among the Wendat and my people have formed their own villages in Haudenosaunee territory, and only have to put on airs of being Iroquois when another tribe comes to visit.”
“So if the Iroquois took people from your tribe and others, they couldn’t have taken you all at one time. Does that mean then, that during the wars between your peoples, the ones they adopted were made to fight you and capture more?”
Gyantwaka gripped his wooden staff, his brow creasing with a great pain.
“Yes,” he said. “It was a horror I would not wish upon my worst enemy. To fight your own tribesmen, to watch them pretend that you were not once neighbors. It is why Jikohnsasee hates the Haudenosaunee so, why she has sworn a great vengeance against them. She was but a child when our nation fell—she carried the fire to fight within her, but not yet the strength. She spent the years afterwards honing her body until she had the muscles of the strongest men, and led small raids into Western Door territory until we decided to align with the French.”
“I feel like such a fool for misjudging her,” Chrétien said. “I misplaced her passion for bloodthirst, with no idea why she cared so much. I can’t believe I judged her without knowing a single thing about her.”
“A lesson well-learned then,” Gyantwaka said, his old cheeks wrinkling in a smile. “And you are not the only one to learn it. Jikohnsasee, after all, misjudged you as well, as a foolish boy with nothing to offer her. But you have proved otherwise, and just as it is my job to teach you, it is also my job to teach her.”
“Thank you, Gyantwaka. Really. And thank you for indulging me each night like this.”
“It is my pleasure. In truth, it is my greatest fear that one day all my knowledge will be lost and forgotten, that these precious stories will disappear from the minds and hearts of our people. Though we are scattered now, I have hope that our flame will not be snuffed out completely, and will one day be re-kindled. Perhaps if it is spread to foreigners like you, it will linger even if we do perish.”
A darkness shrouded the old man’s eyes, but he cast it away soon enough, clearing the air with a hearty laugh.
“Besides, it is an old man’s greatest joy to ramble about the past to the young ones,” he chuckled. “None of the other warriors will let me—they’ve heard these stories a thousand times from their parents and grandparents.”
“I’ll remember every story you tell me, if I can. And if I survive the winter, I’ll return to France and have a historian document it all in writing, and store them in our great libraries there so they will never be forgotten.”
These sessions with the old man always lasted longer than both of them planned for, and by the time they retired to their own beds, it was always well into the night. Most often, Chrétien crashed immediately, his body exhausted from the day and his mind exhausted from the evening. The night he learned the truth about his comrades being forced to fight their fellow people, however, he found no sleep. He tossed and turned in his sheets, haunted by nightmares of being hunted down by the many butlers and maids that made up his staff in Parthenay. Their eyes bore no recognition or memory of him, despite having raised him more than his own father, and they set upon him with an animal ferocity, tearing his stomach open with their bare hands and devouring his entrails. Even in the nights after, every now and again, that same dream would come to him. He hoped more than anything that Gyantwaka was wrong about dreams, that they had no bearing on what was to come.