Chrétien de Parthenay
Former Wendake/Huronia (Modern-Day Ontario Peninsula)
With the first falling of snow upon New World soil, the French offense into the Iroquois frontier had begun. Le Marquis had gathered forces numbering just over two thousand soldiers for the main assault from the west. A thousand more would join them once they had broken into Seneca territory, arriving quickly on fleets of small bateaux and canoes across the lake from Fort Frontenac. The companies that had been stationed at the fort were reinforced by a large force of regular marines from the capital, led by Le Marquis, Le Vicomte, and a few other commandants of their own companies.
Le Marquis had ordered Le Vicomte and his men to tend the second force, despite Le Vicomte’s pleading to be included in the main assault. Chrétien and his deer warriors, on the other hand, were assigned to lead the charge into the lands the Seneca had conquered from the Wendat. The look on Le Vicomte’s face when he learned his ward of all people would have the glory and honor of leading the charge was priceless—like a sad, dejected dog who had begged for scraps and shooed away. But Chrétien felt no honor or glory at being assigned to the vanguard, for he knew that he and his company were chosen not to lead the others into glorious battle, but to soak up the aggression and musket fire from the front. He and his Deer Warriors were expendable playthings to Le Marquis, human shields of savage flesh that would martyr themselves to protect his precious French marines.
There were two silver linings to the imminent doom he had been assigned. The first was that he and his half-company would not have to run in and die alone—another company of native warriors fought alongside them. Strangely, they were Kanienʼkehá:ka—Flint-Wielders, what Le Marquis and the other Frenchman called Maquis. Chrétien was of course skeptical upon learning they were Iroquois, but he soon learned that their origins meant little to inform their current allegiance. Each of the two hundred warriors in that company were outcasts from the rest of Iroquois society, exiled for having converted to Christianity. Given their new faith and subsequent rejection from their people, they had left Iroquois territory and settled their own village called Kahnawake. Gyantwaka suspected that there were likely Wendat and even maybe Chonnonton among them, having been assimilated into their tribes decades ago, or some having fled there to be among other Christians.
The second hidden blessing was that there was no group of people Chrétien would rather march through these lands than his Deer comrades. Though they were not Wendat themselves, their territory was so close that the boundaries often overlapped, and his soldiers were more than comfortable with the layout and terrain of this place. For many of them, it was even nostalgic, places they would visit as children before the great nation of Wendake fell. It was bittersweet, then, as they marched through ruins of once-great villages that now lay empty and destroyed. It reminded Chrétien of Parthenay once his father died—a castle with no lord, stone walls with no enemy to keep out. Once a home to him and her sister, filled with the bustle of butlers and maids, now with nothing left but hallways and rooms that lay hauntingly empty.
The first five days of their expedition were uneventful. Each day they marched, and they slept when they could not march any longer. After setting up camp each night, Chrétien took the opportunity to become familiar with the chief of the Christian Flint-Wielders, since they would be fighting together. They were led by a man named Athasata, who had been given the Christian name of Joseph upon his baptism. He must have been in his thirties, with a strong yet nimble build. Atop his head he wore a crown of wood covered in feathers, with three large ones pointing to the sky to mark him as Keeper of the Eastern Door, and a fourth added across the feather in the front, forming a cross to mark him as Christian. It was the configuration all the men in his company wore with pride. What marked him as chief and leader of all of the other Flient-Wielders was the belt of wampum he wore across his chest. The belt was a tableau of purple beaded shells, bisected in the middle by a cross of beautiful white. It was this belt, Athasata had told Chrétien, that marked their official departure from the rest of the Iroquois, renouncing their traditional ways and their people for the teachings of Christ.
“Can I ask you something?” Chrétien asked him as he studied the intricate lines of beads on the belt.
“Sure,” Athasata replied. The chief took a drag from his pipe, then passed it to Chrétien. He obliged, breathing in a puff of smoke. The smoky tobacco coated his lungs, filling his body with a comforting heat to ward away the cold of the wintry night.
“Why did you do it?” Chrétien asked the man. “You’ve been baptized as a Christian, and you left your people because they wouldn’t accept you. And now you fight your old countrymen, cousins and brothers. Is it worth it?”
Chrétien passed the pipe back to Athasata, who took another drag, releasing a stream of smoke from his nostrils that cascaded towards the night sky.
“A good question,” the chief said. “And one that I am still trying to answer myself. But your question is in fact two separate ones, and it merits two answers. The first is of my faith. Let me ask you, then: why are you a Christian?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You are a Christian, aren’t you? Isn’t that what your name means in your tongue?”
“Well… yes, it is. And yes, I am. But everyone’s a Christian in France. For us, it’s less of a question of whether or not you’re a Christian, and more of what kind of Christian you are. My father was the wrong kind, according to the King.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“You’re avoiding my question. Why do you worship the man named Jesus Christ?”
“Well I… I guess I’m not completely sure. I was born into it, I guess—my father was Christian, so that made me Christian. Not that I don’t believe in it all—I believe in God, I think, and Christ, the Redeemer. But I’ve never really thought about it much.”
“That is a telling answer. You have never thought about your faith because you’ve never been forced to reckon with your faith. I envy you.”
The chief reclined, placing his hands behind his head.
“Would you believe me if I told you it was a marital dispute?” He laughed. “In fact, it was because of faith. The pox had come to our village, and devastated so many families, especially the family of my wife. She lost her mother and father to it, and her younger brother, and her nephew, who was only a baby. You understand that the pox makes men desperate—we see so much death, and look for anything to save us. Some believe that if you convert to Christianity, if you worship Jesus Christ, that he protects you from the pox. My wife heard those rumors, and pleaded with me to convert so we could be saved. But what was I supposed to do? Abandon the old ways, the teachings of my mother and grandmother? So as you were born Christian from your father, I was taught from my mother. If you were asked to abandon your teachings for my old ones, to relinquish the memory of your ancestors, just for some selfish hope of saving yourself, would you?”
“No. No, I wouldn’t.”
“Neither would I. So we fought, and I left. I wandered north in my anger, and stumbled upon Kahnawake. I stayed there among the Teiaiasontha Onkwehonwe—my brothers who had chosen the Cross, out of spite. I wanted to see the folly of their faith, the chaos it surely sowed here, as it had sowed so much in my own life.”
Athasata leaned forward. He took another drag of the pipe, a sigh releasing from his chest along with a puff of smoke.
“But I didn’t. Instead I saw order, and harmony. Kahnawake is a village unlike no other—it is a place for all peoples, settled by all peoples. There are Kanienʼkehá:ka, and Wendat, and Anishinaabe, and Abenaki—all have gathered there, every one of them bound by nothing but their love of the Lord. And then I came to love the Lord, too, for it was there that I witnessed a miracle. There was a girl who lived there, Kateri. Her whole family had been stricken with the pox. She was the sole survivor, and even then the disease had claimed much of her—her face was scarred and disfigured, her limbs thin and frail. I met her only once—she had heard a non-believer had come to the village, and tried to speak to me about the mercy of God. I was defiant and stubborn, and ignored her every word. Two weeks later, she died. I, in my arrogance, decided to visit her deathbed. I’m still not sure why I did it. I think I wanted to prove my wife wrong, to see this Christian girl that had succumbed to illness just the same as any of us. But I’d like to think it was God himself that guided me there, to show me the truth.
“It was unlike anything I had ever seen, or have since. You must understand that when she was alive, her face was mottled and pock-marked. She covered her head with a shawl to hide the way she looked. But upon her death, all her scars disappeared. Her face was beautiful and serene, at such peace that I was in a jealous fury. I left her home, and fled to the woods, out of the village. I slept that night outside among the stars, looking for some meaning to it all. Then, if you would believe it, I saw Kateri again. She was right there in my camp, smiling at me. She told me that I would understand now, that I could be welcomed into the kingdom of heaven just like her. And I swear I saw her ascend, float above the fire and into the sky. And the next morning, I learned I was not the only one. Several others in the village saw her too, and witnessed her ascent into heaven. It was a miracle of God, and in that moment I knew His power, and His grace.”
The chief reclined again, gazing up at the sky, as if Kateri would suddenly appear to both of them. And Chrétien could not help but be taken by some envy that burned in his cheeks and chest. This Iroquois spoke of his devotion to Christ with a fervor and dedication that would rival those of a Cardinal, while it was hardly an afterthought to Chrétien. Perhaps being born and raised into his faith made it more mundane, dampening whatever magic and mystique that had won the chief’s heart. But there were always those devout, even for those born into it, devout enough to commit one’s life to it, to venture out to foreign lands and risk life and limb to spread the good word of God. Why was Chrétien not the same? He realized that, like his sister, he ultimately lacked conviction for anything, including faith. But how could he? How could you believe in the grace of the Holy Father when your own father had gone mad and tried to kill his only son?
“To answer your second question,” Athasata continued, oblivious that Chrétien was now lost in his own thoughts. “I have no qualms about fighting my countrymen. It was their choice to rebuke the teachings of Christ, to banish those who worshipped Him from their lands, to kill the priests that try to come and help them. Kahnawake is a place of many peoples, and thus many chiefs. Even among the Kanienʼkehá:ka there, I am only one of many chiefs. Another of them, and one with more influence than me, disagrees with me. He is Aronhiatekha, and he still believes that we are part of the Five Nations, and we must respect the treaty of peace imposed by the belt of Hiawatha. We have argued over it many times—in my mind, it makes no sense to cling to your bonds when you have been outcast and shunned by them. But he is set in his ways, and I in mine, I suppose. He and many other Kahwanakeronon have chosen to take no part in this fight, but the two hundred I have gathered here share my point of view, at least.”
Chrétien nodded, but he was no longer listening. His mind was lost in the chief’s words, in the story of his conversion and the miracle he witnessed. What miracles had Chrétien ever seen? Everything in his life thus far had convinced him that there was no loving God—if there was a God who could see everything that happened on this earth, he was either a sadist or just apathetic. But he admired Athasata’s conviction, enough to be jealous of it. At least, he thought could form his own conviction, one that would keep him going for now. He would survive this winter offensive, he would win each battle he fought, and he would bring Jikohnsasee and her brethren the justice and vengeance they deserved.
At night, Chrétien tried his best to find sleep in between alternating shifts of watch. When he did, he would dream. He dreamt of Kateri and her ascent to the stars, uniting with Christ and Michael and all the angels of heaven. He dreamed of the Great Peacemaker, and Hiawatha, and Jikohnsasee, and all the figures of legend Gyantwaka had told him stories of. But in all these dreams, with all these people, he could never make out any of their faces. All the rest of them were in perfect, crisp detail—their hair, their clothes, but never their faces. When he woke, he could never tell if he saw their faces and simply didn’t recall them, or if they were blank and featureless in his dreams. It was something that haunted him ever so slightly, something that lingered in the back of his mind as he pushed through the monotonous doldrums of the cold winter march.