Chesapeake by James A. Michener

reasons:
    ‘Whenever, in the old days, we fled to the northern rivers I watched one spot where two waters meet, and I have always wanted to live there with Navitan and the children. When I first came to your river I lived on the island where Fishing-long-legs instructed me, and then on the cliff where I saw how beautiful this land can be, and in the marsh where Onk-or the goose came to see me, and then in this mysterious village where no people lived. I am a man who likes to live apart, and I feel a deep urge to build my wigwam between the two waters.’
     
    ‘Who will be our werowance?’ they asked, and he told them that they should select a young man who could serve them for two generations, and when they protested that they had never chosen their leader before, he allowed his eyes to wander over the frightened crowd. They came to rest on Matapank, who had stood beside him in battle, and when the villagers realized that Pentaquod had indicated his choice, they shouted, ‘Matapank!’ and were gratified.
    Pentaquod believed that once he announced his decision to leave, he should do so in a hurry, for if he lingered, he would detract from the importance of the new werowance. Accordingly, he gave Matapank an intensive series of instructions, until that somber day when he joined him in a canoe and paddled downriver past the island to the margin of the bay. There, as the canoe drifted idly, he handed over the hidden burden of leadership. ‘You’ve heard of the time when the Great Canoe came into these waters.’ The new werowance nodded. ‘What you haven’t heard is that when it moved along the shore Orapak, who was a boy then, and his grandfather, who was the werowance, crept behind trees and spied upon the people in the canoe.’
    Matapank pursed his lips; he knew the traditions of his tribe, but of such an adventure he had not heard. ‘What did they see?’
    ‘The people in the canoe had fair skins, not like us, and they had different bodies.’
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘They glistened. When the sun struck their bodies, they glistened.’ Pentaquod allowed this information to sink in, then added, ‘And the Great Canoe moved without paddlers.’
    This was frightening. Values beyond comprehension were involved, and the young leader could make nothing of them. Then Pentaquod added his last intelligence: ‘One day that canoe will return, and we shallbe dealing with people entirely different … white skins … glistening bodies.’
    Matapank had been eager to take on the responsibilities of leadership, but these new factors evoked apprehension. ‘When they come, will you help me?’
    ‘They may not come in my lifetime,’ Pentaquod said.
    ‘I think they will,’ the young man replied.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Long ago I dreamed that I would be the werowance. It happened. And at the same time I dreamed that others came to the river, neither Nanticokes nor Susquehannocks. And they will come.’
    Pentaquod liked this response. The leader of a tribe should be one who has visions of the future, who can adjust his thinking to developments which he knows to be inevitable. In his case he had known from the start that peace with the Nanticokes was possible, and his every act as werowance had led in that direction. He had also known that his pitiful little tribe could never defeat the Susquehannocks, and he had kept them from making that fatal effort.
    ‘You are ready to lead,’ he told Matapank as they allowed the canoe to drift, and when they reached shore he handed the new leader a cherished talisman, which he had kept hidden for this moment: the copper disk long worn by the werowance of this tribe. Then he promised, ‘If the strange ones return while I am alive, I will help.’
    That day he and his family left the village. Putting aside his three turkey feathers, he led his family to a pair of sturdy canoes, one burned from oak, one from pine, and together they paddled west past the marshes and around the white cliffs into a