Kidnapped in the Year 1792

Words by Ken Leland

Art by Sandra Eckert

Coohcoocheeh, the Mohawk healer, lived across the river. Her sons had stolen a Settler child. My friend Toghtarask told me this. “Aaron, she wants you here when the boy arrives. You know—another white face if he is afraid.” 

I shook my head in amazement. “And then I should take him home?” 

“Oh no, Aaron. He comes far, all the way from the Ohio River. Besides, it would be cruel to send him back.”

* * *

Toghtarask and I sat on the pier below my trading post, our hand lines drifting in deep water. I could see the gray-haired woman as she stooped in her garden. Coohcoocheeh gathered ripe beans, carrots and herbs she and I had planted in early spring. Balancing a wooden bowl on her hip, she came to the water’s edge and signed broadly that we might see.

“Aaron, she says to bring these fish for lunch.” 

“My eyes are as keen as yours, Elder Brother.” 

Toghtarask squinted against light sparkling upon water. Then “Aiiieee!” when a buffalo fish struck the waxed cord in his palm. My mind swirled as he pulled in his catch. 

Why, I asked myself, would it be cruel to send the Settler child back? I tried again. “Coohcoocheeh will ransom the child. Is that it, Toghtarask?” 

“No, Younger Brother. She will adopt him, raise the boy as her own.” 

He looked at me quizzically as if surprised I did not understand.

* * *

When our fish string was full, we lifted a canoe onto the dock to empty two fingers of rainwater. Toghtarask was half a head taller than I, and one winter older than my twenty summers. As usual, he wore a vest of loose cotton with his hair wrapped in bright cloth. Young women cast admiring glances when he passed by. Never before had I found him lacking in compassion or common sense.

How could Toghtarask suppose stealing a child is unremarkable, anything but profoundly wrong?

When Toghtarask bided time at our trading post, resting from travel, often he crossed the river to join me at Coohcoocheeh’s kitchen table. Still, he was wary of her. Toghtarask was Bear Totem of the Neshnabek; she, Mohawk of the Turtle Clan. In living memory, Mohawk and Neshnabek were ferocious enemies, but times changed. Nations came to understand who the real enemy was.

As I knelt to brace the canoe, Toghtarask smiled and offered me a paddle. “Guide us, Aaron.” He inclined his head and swept an open palm towards the stern. 

For almost a year I supposed him exceptionally polite, always ceding direction of our passage upon water to me. I held this view until Coohcoocheeh confided it is a woman’s place to sit aft. A man takes the prow to do heavy work, while his companion steers for them both. 

“Your turn, Elder Brother,” I told him, tapping a finger against my forehead in remembrance. He laughed and I climbed into the bow. 

It took only a few paddle strokes on the Auglaize River to reach the confluence with the Maumee. Coohcoocheeh’s cabin was on the Maumee shore, one hundred heartbeats away. He angled our craft against the current and I dug deep to pull us across.

The Trading Post

John Norton, the factor of this place and my mentor this past year, left the post in my care over winter. When snow showers flew, Norton traveled south into Shawnee country to barter among his companion’s people. Now, with spring nearly over, I expected his return in a few days. Toghtarask had recently completed a trading foray east into Seneca and Mingo homelands. 

Thinking of Norton, her favorite fur trader, Coohcoocheeh told Toghtarask and I that we each needed a companion to counsel us. She complained that Toghtarask was foot-loose and irrepressible; described me as staid and lacking in martial spirit. Indeed, she declared, only by mixing the two of us together could she make a single, balanced man. How could half-men survive without companions to guide them?

Coohcoocheeh

In only moments we crossed into the Maumee by canoe. Coohcoocheeh’s log cabin stood some fifty paces away beneath soaring willows. A stone chimney formed part of the river-facing cabin wall. Cedar shakes covered its roof, and close on the right was a timbered shed, almost as large as the cabin. This lodge housed guests who came to her for healing or divination. To the left were corn fields and a medicinal garden.

Why did she direct her sons to take a child?

Sliding into river grass, our canoe landed beside a gravel path. Coohcoocheeh’s cabin door was open but she was absent. A grandfather sat cross-legged, bathing in noontime sun outside the visitors’ lodge. From his dress, I judged him Odawa, close kin of the Neshnabek. I spoke carefully in the language Toghtarask was teaching me. “Good day, Honored Uncle.”

Unseeing, he turned to my voice. His eyes were bandaged and treated with healing salve. 

“It is a fine day, Nephew. Are you the fur trader who brings fish for dinner?” 

“I am, Uncle. This is my brother, Toghtarask of the Bear.” 

As they conversed, my understanding quickly fell behind as they searched for family relations and mutual friendships. After a time, I touched the old man’s hand. “I go now to make preparations for Coohcoocheeh’s return.” 

I cleaned our catch at a chopping block, then carried the residue as fertilizer for growing sweet corn. Kneeling. I buried the offal among shoulder-high stalks.

“At least, Aaron, you know not to throw fish guts into the river.” 

I raised my eyes. Coohcoocheeh was dressed in her finest as she did when visiting her companion’s grave. She smiled at me. “Has Toghtarask explained why I asked for you?” 

“A Settler child is coming.” Still kneeling, my eyes slid away from her. Her voice was unhappy then. 

“Get up. Get up. Show me the fish. I suppose you want me to fry them?” 

“Yes please, Respected Grandmother. Haven’t we come for dinner?” 

“Yes, but not only that.” She glanced towards her cabin. “Come!”

I followed quietly. Her hair was in a bun gathered by a silver clasp. A white, beaded blouse draped over her dark blue skirt. Beneath the skirt, embroidered leggings brushed moccasin tops. There were three silver bracelets on her left wrist and a gold armband bunched an upper sleeve. Filigree silver earrings dangled to her shoulders. A gold clasp fastened a necklace of sea shells.

Perhaps never a great beauty, she exuded dignity nevertheless. In her late forties, Coohcoocheeh was about my own mother’s age.

At the cabin door, Toghtarask held out an iron skillet for inspection. Coohcoocheeh sniffed the buffalo fish. “Good. Build a fire. I’ll cook them in herbs.” She turned back to me on the porch steps. “Go inside.”

Why so stern? What had I done wrong? 

I slid onto a spindled chair at the dinner table. A fine pewter teapot and white porcelain cups graced the table. Above, hanging from open rafters, were strands of drying sweet grass, tobacco, and healing herbs. An inner door led to a small bedroom. 

A few coals glowed in the brick-lined hearth as my friend stoked kindling into a stone fire box built at waist height. “Toghtarask, stand away from that fry pan. It is a woman’s skill. You’ll burn your fingers.”

The Odawa elder joined us for lunch: fish with hominy, green beans, and cornbread. Coohcoocheeh gave us the tiniest glasses of whiskey I’d ever drunk. Afterwards, Toghtarask helped the blind grandfather back to his pallet. When he returned, she was telling me of her sons’ efforts to steal a child.

“Two summers ago, Aaron, before you came to the trading post, I told White Crane and his brother to bring me a captive to adopt. But foolishly, my sons seized a great, white giant.” 

Toghtarask remembered. He nodded in confirmation as he took a place beside me at the table. 

“Their captive is a man who pulls keelboats upriver with his bare hands. He was too strong for them and was wounded before my sons could subdue him. I saved his life and nursed him back to health.” 

She sighed and worried at her silver bracelets. “But how could I adopt such a thing? He was much too old. Instead, I sleep with him on a cold night, and on a warm night too, if I’ve a mind. Our captive hired onto riverboats here and White Crane said he would make us wealthy when he brought his freedom. But what do I care for money? Instead, thinking to please me, the riverboat man squandered his wages on these trinkets.” She twisted the golden armband. “So finally, I said he had earned his freedom in presents and sent him away.” She smiled. “He visits me from time to time. But still, I have no young son.” 

She lapsed into silence until Toghtarask prompted her. “Then you decided to try again?” 

“Yes! In the last quarter of Strawberry Moon, I sent White Crane and Black Heron, his brother, to raid Yankee Settlers on the Ohio River. This time I told them clearly to bring me a boy, a child.” 

I glanced at Toghtarask. His was the wary countenance he always kept in her presence, but without any trace of surprise or disapproval.

Coohcoocheeh, of course, noticed the exchange between us. “What is it?” she asked and I lowered my eyes.

“Aaron, are you displeased? Do you think I should adopt you instead?” She came closer to take my downcast face between her hands. “My dear, you’re also too old to adopt. A grown man already, or close enough.”

Good Lord! I care for this old woman, but never did I expect … 

“My sons sent word ahead so I might prepare. Tomorrow morning, they will bring me a boy. Aaron, I ask you to reassure him when he arrives, to tell him to honor me as his mother.”

Oliver Spencer

Next morning, Toghtarask shouted up the attic stairs. “They’re coming!” 

I looked from the trading post window into dawn’s light. There were two mounted warriors crossing the Maumee River, White Crane and Black Heron. A small body was strapped, face down, over the saddle blanket of a third horse. “He’s hurt.”

“Hurry, Aaron!”  

White Crane held the boy’s face above water until they reached muddy shallows. As they splashed up onto the riverbank, Coohcoocheeh screamed, “Do you bring me a corpse? What have you done to your new brother?” 

The child’s head lolled from side to side. There was a foul stench; he’d soiled himself repeatedly. His trousers were caked in it. Toghtarask untied him promptly and carried the boy back into the river. Floating him on one arm, Toghtarask striped away his clothing to bathe him gently. The youngster did not wake.

Black Heron tried to calm his raging mother. “He escaped us. We hunted for three days but he’d eaten green raspberries and parts of a dead raccoon. His bowels …” 

“Aaron, bring blankets.” 

I ran for the cabin. Returning, the boy lay naked upon the grass. Coohcoocheeh was frantic. “His feet are torn and bleeding! How did this happen?” Then to me, “Cover him. Keep him warm.”

White Crane shrugged. “He had no moccasins. We ran from militiamen until we reached our horses.”

Black Heron reached out to her. “Mother, we’re sorry. There was nothing else we could do.”

“Go away, both of you. I’ll save your brother.”

She ministered to the youngster in her bedroom. With open eyes he stared, but saw nothing. His mind wandered, lost. In waking dreams, he mumbled and called out, then fell into fevered sleep until he convulsed violently. I held a bowl to his mouth or chamber pot below, but I did not always guess aright. Coohcoocheeh only patted my hand and we stripped the bedding again. 

How could there be anything left inside him? 

“He will die if he holds nothing,” she told me. “Great Spirit! Why would he eat carrion?”

Coohcoocheeh searched among herbs draped overhead in the rafters. She prepared a decoction of red oak, wild cherry bark and dewberry root, all of which she boiled into a brown sludge. At the rising of Half Summer Moon, she cradled the boy in her arms, sang to the Great Spirit as she dribbled thimblefuls into his mouth. She labored in vain as he continued to vomit, even losing the clear spring water Toghtarask brought. 

“Aaron, you must help me.” 

“Anything, Grandmother.”  

“Pray. Pray to the Settler God. Maybe between the two of Them …”

By moon set, Toghtarask was sleeping in the lodge nearby, while I slumped upon the bedroom floor. At sunrise, I found the child cradled peacefully in Coohcoocheeh’s arms. She blinked and looked at me. “Go to the garden. Pick carrots and cut them into small pieces. Boil them until they’re mush.” 

“I will, Grandmother.” 

* * *

When he woke, it was just before midday. He said his name was Oliver Spencer and he was eleven years old. “I was real sick.”

“Yes, indeed,” I told him at his bedside. 

“But my mother held me the whole time.” 

“Coohcoocheeh was holding you.” I gazed towards her through the open door. She stood watching us from the hearth, apprehending nothing we said except her name. 

“She’s an Injun?” 

“Yes.” 

“Injuns stole me!” 

“Yes, they did.” 

“Will she keep me safe from those warriors?” 

“Yes.” Most certainly, she will keep you safe. 

The boy pushed himself higher against pillows, and gave a faint smile when he saw her. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I’m real hungry. Is there somethin’ to eat?” 

John Norton

“Aaron, I do not expect you to accept or condone it, but you must realize you’re not always the measure of right and wrong.” 

John Norton returned to our trading post three days after Oliver’s arrival. I hadn’t visited or spoken with the boy since that first day. Norton’s Shawnee companion, the lovely Tikecomme, came to lodge with Coohcoocheeh, who doted on her like a daughter. To Norton, I poured out my objections, my indignation at the theft of a child. He walked with me to an apple orchard behind the trading post. There we sat upon grass as he tried to explain. 

“It is the Nations’ way, Aaron, and so it has always been. Their custom is tied up with death of loved ones in war and the need to heal sorrow. This is Coohcoocheeh’s hope. In the old days, warring tribes took captives, not for vengeance, but to ease longing for those lost. Now Nations do not war with each other, yet they have an implacable enemy.” 

I knew Norton spoke the truth; an eternal war raged as Settlers pushed westward from the Atlantic Ocean. 

“Just imagine,” Norton continued. “This boy might become a champion among Settlers of his adoptive people. That would be a very good thing, don’t you think?”

“But it’s wrong to tear a child from his family! It just is.” 

Norton nodded and was silent for a moment. “I know you think so. And so do I, in some ways. But if you try to steal him back, you will only make things much worse. No one here thinks Coohcoocheeh has done anything wrong.” 

I scowled and fumed. “Will people turn against me if I try to take Oliver home?” 

“Yes, Aaron. I’m not sure either you or the boy would survive such an attempt.” 

A possibility, an outside chance, came to me during a sleepless night. “The British Indian Department in Niagara, would they help, maybe urge her to accept a ransom to release him?” 

“Yes, perhaps. Draft a letter and I will send it downriver with the next fur consignment. But be patient, Aaron; that may take some time to work a solution.” 

As Norton and I schemed beneath shade trees, the source of my moral indignation rounded into view. Coohcoocheeh wore a beaded dress with silver and gold chains at her neck. Her face was an angry storm. Tikecomme, Norton’s companion, followed a pace or two behind her, lithe and beautiful as a swan in water. Tikecomme was radiant, but clearly anticipated the lecture we were, or I was, about to receive. We rose and bowed as Coohcoocheeh approached. 

“Tikecomme told me I would find you here. I think, Norton, you must take our young friend in hand to teach him manners. He promised to visit my new son, but instead he avoids us, though I asked Toghtarask to invite him. Twice! Who is at fault here, Aaron?” 

“I suppose I am, Grandmother.” My face grew hot as I studied my feet, embarrassed like a child caught in some ridiculous mischief. Tikecomme spoke not a word and hid her amusement. 

“You suppose, Aaron?” 

“Grandmother, it is most undoubtedly my fault.” 

“And now, you are forgiven, dear one. But you must take your rifle and bring a turkey or a goose for supper. I have vegetables already chosen and Toghtarask will pick them when you arrive. Norton, I’ve missed you. Come with this young rascal when the sun is only three fingers above the trees.” 

She turned regally and headed towards the wharf. Tikecomme glanced back to Norton with a smile that dazzled. Befittingly affected, Norton sighed. “We’ve been commanded to appear. Get your rifle, Aaron, and we’ll try not to disappoint her ladyship.”

Tikecomme

With a westering sun, the heat of day began to ease. 

Oliver’s old clothes had been burned, and Coohcoocheeh dressed him as an Indian youth in white shirt and vest, breech clout, leggings, and moccasins. Oliver was still too weak to stand and propped himself against a willow trunk, close beside Tikecomme as she plucked a gray goose for supper. She chatted to him in a mixture of language and signs, though the boy understood not a word. Entranced, he attended her every movement, listened eagerly. Her words soared into laughter, then fell into soft confidences as she leaned close to him, pointing with her eyes to Toghtarask, to Coohcoocheeh, or to Norton, her beloved. 

It was all light-hearted nonsense, stories she composed on a moment, tales in words and gestures—of Toghtarask bartering for pelts among the Nations, Coohcoocheeh’s skill in healing, and Norton teaching Tikecomme’s children to swim. Oliver comprehended some part of the pantomime in this last story and confessed to her, in English, that he could not swim. She pointed then to Toghtarask and Norton, indicating those who would help him learn. She gestured with open hand to me, saying, “But our friend Aaron has perhaps too many cares, too many worries for your safety, to devote time teaching you.” 

I was frightened and ashamed. Dear God. She needs only look to know my mind. 

“What did she say?” Oliver asked when he saw my face. 

“Nothing important. Tikecomme is a marvelous storyteller.”

Oliver seemed both intelligent and curious, particularly about his circumstances. Too weak to partake at table, Coohcoocheeh braced him upright in bed and spooned out herbal broth. After supper we brought chairs to ring his bedside. Coohcoocheeh remained close beside him on the straw mattress. 

The boy was alert but very weak. Coohcoocheeh had medicated and wrapped his poor feet, cut and bruised by running barefoot as they fled from Yankee militiamen. His back was covered with welts and these too she treated with salve. Black Heron, it seemed, switched Oliver hard after he escaped from the brothers for three days. Alone and in hiding, hunger led him to eat unwisely, but Coohcoocheeh’s herbal broth eased his dysentery. Simple terror also had an effect. I hastened to convince him that he was safe with Coohcoocheeh, that she had taken all responsibility for him. 

When I said this, Oliver turned his face to her. Ever so gently, he tugged Coohcoocheeh’s hand to his side. She nodded to him. “Now, everyone leave. The boy is tired.” 

As I stood, her eyes were misting. 

“Go. Go.” She shooed Norton towards the door. He left, pulling his chair from the bedroom. Tikecomme leaned in to kiss the old woman’s brow, and then to Oliver’s delight, Tikecomme kissed him, too. The boy shrank from Toghtarask’s handshake, who then merely inclined his head before leaving. 

How unfair. He doesn’t yet know to trust my friend.

When I turned, Oliver stretched out his arm to me. “Aaron.” 

“Oh. All right. Aaron will stay,” Coohcoocheeh said. She went out and shut the bedroom door.

“What did she really say about you, Aaron? The pretty one, I mean?” 

I looked at the dark-haired boy lying against pillows and drew a chair closer. Where to begin?

 “Oliver, Tikecomme knows I disapprove of this. Somehow, everyone knows.”

The boy stared unblinking, surely hoping that I would take him home. I motioned towards the closed door. “I think Coohcoocheeh already loves you.” 

“But she won’t let me go?” 

“No. She won’t.” 

“Aaron, would you take me home?” 

“It would be very dangerous for both of us.” 

Silently, he began to cry. Is there anything more I can tell him? 

“I know you won’t believe this. I hardly credit it myself.” 

The boy sniffed a few times. “Tell me.” 

“They think …” I took a very deep breath. “Coohcoocheeh, Toghtarask, Tikecomme, they all believe someday you will thank them for rescuing you from the ways of Settlers, from the life they lead.” 

The boy shook his head slowly, uncomprehending. “But I love Ma and Pa!” 

“They know that, Oliver.” 

Time passed until he looked to me, hoping I would tell him something more. Anything. 

“As you will learn, life is very different here, among the Nations.”

Oliver sought my eyes. “Do you think it’s true? Someday I’ll thank them for taking me away?” 

I patted his shoulder. “It may be true.” Often it happens that way. 

I opened the door when he fell asleep. The others had retired, and the cabin was empty except for Coohcoocheeh. Once more, she’d dressed in her finest.

“Come, Aaron. It’s time you met my companion.” 

Coohcoocheeh lighted a tallow candle. She hooked a star-patterned lantern on her staff and we walked into the night. A short garden lane lay behind the cabin, and beyond that was a winding forest path. A short way up a hillside, we stopped beneath a towering elm. Hand-sized slabs of limestone lined the grave site. A wooden post with the girth of a ship’s mast rose chest high at one end. A red painted face was carved into it. 

“Wolf Runner,” Coohcoocheeh addressed her dead companion. “This is Aaron. He does not think he approves of me. But you must not be angry, for at heart he is a good man. Yes, even though he is a Settler.” 

“Sit with me.” She took my hand and led me to a bench nearby. 

“Aaron, it was almost four years ago when Wolf Runner walked the Path of Souls. Do you see it? It begins just there.” She pointed to the forest trail below us. “Still, he is often beside me.”

I rose quickly. Why has she brought me to this place?

“Don’t be afraid. I protect you.” She enfolded my hand in both of hers. “You should not begrudge me the boy.” 

I snatched my hand away.

“No, I am protecting you. Do not fear me. Do not fear what I do. Already I grow to love Oliver. Soon he will feel the same about us.”

I turned to her and motioned to Wolf Runner’s grave. “Does he ask you to do this? To steal a child?”

“You were very young, Aaron, but do you remember when Yankees fought the King’s People? Wolf Runner was a proud warrior, but I thought if Settlers were killing each other, Mohawks should step aside to let them do their worst. For once, it was not Haudenosaunee who were dying. War Chief Thayendanegea came to our village with the King’s black wampum belt, and many warriors there spoke of picking it up. Wolf Runner said he would be shamed if he did not do so as well, but I opposed him. Wolf Runner promised we would follow the advice of the Clan Mother of all the Haudenosaunee, and we went to consult her. My companion thought he had tricked me, for the Clan Mother is the War Chief Thayendanegea’s sister and she has always supported the King. But even so, she listened to my words. The League of Five Nations is broken, she said to us. Some Nations are for the King, some for the Yankees, some for neither. And then she spoke to me alone, ‘Coohcoocheeh, find shelter among the Onondaga who will try to stand aside. Let Wolf Runner do as he must.’ But because my companion would not leave me and our children alone in a strange place, he followed us to the Onondaga and did not go to war.

“And so, we moved west from the valley of the Mohawk. But in a few seasons, Yankees came to punish the Onondaga because that Nation would not join in their fight against the King. And when some Onondaga warriors did join to deflect the Long Knives’ wrath, the King’s War Chief came and burned the Onondaga longhouses. To escape Thayendanegea’s fury, we fled farther west, through the lands of the Cayuga, Seneca and Mingo, beyond the lands of the Lenape and Shawnee, until we reached this place. And here it was Wolf Runner vowed to stand. 

“Four years ago, when the Long Knives came to kill the Miamis People, Wolf Runner and our sons joined the Nations who went to their aid. Many died. Wolf Runner’s body lies here.” 

Coohcoocheeh patted the grave post fondly.

“Soon I will join him, Aaron. But until then, young Oliver will fill the empty place in my heart.” 

About the author

Ken Leland won the Carleton University Creative Writing Contest, Passages, for 2015 and his debut historical novel, 1812 The Land Between Flowing Waters, was published by Fireship Press. Eleven of his short stories have been published in various reviews and anthologies.  

About the illustrator

Sandra Eckert is a doodler, a dabbler, and a messy and restless individual. An avid naturopath and off-the-road walker, she finds inspiration in the unscenic vistas and hidden places. While her interests currently lie in the world of art, she has been known to tend goats, whitewater kayak, fish for piranha, and teach teenaged humans. She is fascinated by the lessons of the natural world, both seen and unseen. Sandra holds a BFA with certification, and has continued her education both formally and informally, though she is too distracted to gather up her credits. She lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania with her husband, Peter, and her dogs, Jack and Tobi.  Additional works are available here.