New York - The Novel

taking had long been an Indian trail.
    The Manates had been the name of the Indians who’d occupied the island. But they were just one of so many groups of Algonquin-speaking people who had settlements in the region. There were the Canarsee Indians over the East River in Brooklyn; across the harbor, by the broad piece of land the Dutch called Staten Island, dwelt the Raritan. Starting up the great river to the north one encountered the Hackensack and the Tappan. There were a score of names. From the start, the White Men had noticed that all these folk were handsome: the men tall and graceful, the women with finely cut features. As van Dyck gazed down at the girl walking beside him, he felt proud.
    But few of the White Men bothered to study the Indians. Would he have done so himself, he wondered, if it hadn’t been for the girl’s mother?
    Even the settlement on Manhattan had been born of confusion. When the local Indians had taken a parcel of goods from Pierre Minuit, their understanding had been clear: the White Men were giving the usual gift for the right to share their hunting grounds for a season or two. In European terms, it might be thought of as a rent. Since Indians did not personally own land, the idea that Minuit was buying the land in perpetuity would never have occurred to them. Not that the good burghers of New Amsterdam would have cared if they had understood, van Dyck considered wryly. The Dutch idea of land entitlement was practical: if you settled it, you owned it.
    No wonder there had been friction down the years. Aggrieved Indians had attacked. Outlying settlements upriver had been abandoned. Even here on Manhattan, two Dutch hamlets—Bloomingdale, a few miles up the west side, and Harlem in the north—had suffered severe damage.
    But always, in the end, the White Man took more land. Vast tracts upriver were granted to Dutch patroons. A Dane called Bronck had paid the local Indians to vacate his huge parcel just north of Manhattan. Some small Indian groups were still eking out an existence on Bronck’s land and the wilder parts of Manhattan. That was all.
    They had gone about five miles along the trail, and reached an area of woodland in the center of the island, when van Dyck decided it was time to eat. Taking a small path that led westward, they went past dells and outcrops of bedrock until they came to a glade where wild strawberries sprinkled the grass. There van Dyck dismounted, and tethered his horse to a sapling. Tossing a blanket on the ground, he told Pale Feather to sit.
    “Now,” he smiled, “let us see what your father has brought.”
    It had been easy enough to buy corn porridge, dried raisins, hickory nuts and some pieces of smoked meat—the mixture that the Indians called “pimekan.” Also, Dutch coleslaw and rye bread. But he had also bought some Dutch treats—chocolates and cookies—which would please any child. Sitting side by side, father and daughter shared their meal contentedly. She had just eaten her first cookie when she turned to him and asked: “Do you think I should get a tattoo?”
    Van Dyck paused. What an enchanting figure she was. Her little feet were encased in moccasins, her long, dark hair tied back with a thong.Like most Indian girls of her age, in the warm months of the year, she covered only the lower part of her body with a deerskin skirt that reached to her knees. Her chest was bare, except for the little hanging pendant; her breasts had not started to grow yet. Her skin—protected from the sun and from mosquitoes by a light smearing of raccoon oil—was perfect. When she was older, she’d probably put a little red paint on her cheeks and darken the area round her eyes. But until then, he hoped she would remain exactly as the perfect little girl she was. Not that the Indian women went in for big tattoos like the men. But even so …
    “I think you should wait,” he said carefully, “until you are married, and then choose a tattoo that will be pleasing to your husband.”
    She considered, and nodded.
    “I will wait.”
    She sat quietly, but it seemed to him that she was thinking about something. After a while she looked up at him.
    “Did you ever kill a bear?”
    The rite of passage. To become a man, among her people, every boy had to kill a deer—and rightly so. It was proof that he could feed a family. But to prove that he was truly a brave, he must accomplish the far more difficult and dangerous task of killing a bear. When a man had