Writing "Alsoomse and Wanchese" -- Boy to Man, Hunting
Every reader of historical fiction wants to believe that the
detail a historical novelist includes in his narrative is true to what is known
about the people and time about which he writes. The novelist must do considerable research to
warrant such belief. My “Writing
Alsoomse and Wanchese” posts have provided you different aspects of how and where
coastal Carolina Algonquians lived in 1584 when they first encountered English
explorers. I will eventually write about
my decision-making concerning characters, plot, and specific difficulties that I
have encountered, but not yet. I need to
provide additional context.
A man’s role in Algonquian society was that of fisherman, hunter,
and protector. Women grew and harvested
the crops, collected the nuts and berries, gathered the shellfish, and prepared
all sources of food for every inhabitant’s consumption. Men provided the necessary fish, fowl, and
meat so vital for survival especially during the months when food that women
provided was not available. Because Man
is innately war-like, village survival also required that Algonquian men be
fearless warriors. This post will
discuss the training of boys to become hunters and warriors and how Algonquian
men hunted.
A man’s success was measured by the wealth of the food he
provided. Being an excellent provider
required skill, endurance, and courage.
How well a man was regarded in the village depended on his success as a
hunter. Great exploits as a warrior gained
him high favor with his weroance (ruler) and often a seat at village council
meetings. It was therefore incumbent
that boys’ parents trained their sons early to become skilled hunters.
Boys practiced boy and arrow skills at a young age. Any boy lagging in the development of
accuracy might have his mother deny him breakfast until he was able to hit moss
tossed into the air with an arrow. Games
were played that involved shooting accuracy: for instance, shooting competitively
arrows through rolling reed hoops. Boys
learned how to construct bows and arrows.
They learned intimate knowledge of local terrain and plant cover that
attracted certain animals. They accompanied
their fathers and older relatives on hunting expeditions, learning by
observation and by trial and error that which was expected.
Psychological pressure was put on them. All children were given birth names. As they matured, they could be given
replacement names that reflected a noticeable aspect of their emergent
character. The names reminded everybody
in the village of how much or how little they had progressed as good providers,
future warriors, and men of worthy character.
Here is a sampling of Algonquian boys’ names.
Algonquian
Name English
Translation
Anakausuen worker
Askook snake
Askuwheteau he keeps watch
Kesegowaase swift
Kitchi brave
Matunaagd fights
Mekledoodum conceited
Pannoowau he lies
Segenam lazy
Sometime between the ages of 10 and 15 every boy
participated in an initiation into manhood.
The Virginia Powhatans called the initiation huskanaw. The very few
Englishmen that commented about Carolina Algonquians rituals in the 1580s made
no mention of a coming of age ritual, but it was common among Algonquian tribes
elsewhere so we can assume that something quite similar happened in the
villages by Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds and the Pamlico and Chowan Rivers
The ritual was a rigorous test of endurance. It began with a morning-long dance and feast
in which the entire village participated.
Two huge dance circles were formed about a large fire. People, dressed in their very best, led by
their weroance, danced four in a rank, seemingly endlessly, one circle moving
clockwise, the other counter-clockwise.
Four principal men of the weroance stood in the middle of the two
circles. They would hit with a bundle of
reeds anybody who lagged as he or she danced.
A group of men wearing horns and holding green boughs danced inside the
two circles. Without warning they would
suddenly stop, make a hellish noise, throw aside their boughs, run up a small
tree while clapping their hands, and tear the tree to the ground. They would then resume their dancing. Eventually, the boys who were to be
initiated, their faces painted white, were presented. They were brought into the circles. People danced around them and sang.
In the afternoon the boys were led to a tree and told to sit
next to it. Men guarded them with reed
bundles. The guards then formed a lane of
two lines away from the tree. Boys who
had recently been initiated led the boys, one by one, through the lane. The guards, pretending to be furious (as if
what was happening was an abduction), struck the initiated boys with their
bundles. The neophyte boys were taken to
another tree and ordered to sit. The
ritual was repeated. At least one of the
two trees about which the young boys had sat was torn apart by the “enraged”
guards. Female spectators from a
distance mourned loudly. They had beside
them items associated with a funeral: dry wood, mats, skins, and moss for
preparing the dead.
Next came the boys’ “death” ceremony. They were taken to a valley or ravine where
the weroance was waiting. A feast lasted
2 or 3 hours. Men then formed another
lane through which the boys had to pass.
The boys were ordered to lie lifelessly about a tree. The men danced around them for awhile and
then sat in a circle around them. The
weroance ordered dry wood to be brought to construct a makeshift steeple that
was to be burned. All of the day’s activities
were attempts to frighten the boys and test their courage.
The final part of huskanaw
began a day or so later. The boys were
taken into the woods for several months under the supervision of grown men,
called “keepers.” Shut in a cage – a
tall lattice-constructed enclosure shaped like a cone -- the boys were given a
concoction of ground up, poisonous, intoxicating roots. The mixture made them crazy. They drank the concoction for 18 to 20
days. They were repeatedly beaten. They were released finally from the cage and for
several weeks brought gradually off the drug.
They were brought back to the village in a zombie-like state to show
that they remembered nothing of their boyhood existence. If a boy exhibited any recollection of his
past – such as recognizing a parent – he was taken back into the woods to
repeat the final ritual. Usually the boy
did not survive.
###
Hunting of deer was done by stalking and surrounding. “Deer stalking was done by lone hunters and
demanded tremendous skill; it earned a successful hunter considerable prestige. Stalking was done with a dummy deer, made of
a deerskin with the head stuffed and the body slit on one side to admit the
hunter’s arm. The hunter ‘wore’ the skin
as he approached a browsing deer, creeping from one tree to another. If the deer became wary and stared at him,
the hunter moved the head in a natural, deerlike way … [He] would make deerlike movements and allay
the suspicions of the deer, which would then allow the hunter to come near
enough to shoot” (Rountree 39).
Surrounding, or “fire-hunting” done by the Powhatans of
Virginia “required more people and killed more deer. There were two variants. In one, a group of men would find a herd of
deer and then spread themselves in a circle around it. … They
built fires between their stands and began shouting. …
Panicked, the game fled the fires, only to find that between the fires
were shouting, shooting men. Soon the
deer would be running in a circle … while the men picked them off one by one”
(Rountree 40). John Smith estimated that
6 to 15 deer were killed in a single fire-hunt.
Deer could also be trapped on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by
water. Cutting off a herd’s only means
of retreat, a group of hunters needed only to advance and shoot the deer either
at the end of the peninsula or in the water from land or canoe.
Large-scale hunting trips were taken in the late fall to
places not overhunted. For the
Powhatans, those places were located near the major Virginia
The gear of a Powhatan and, most likely, Carolina Algonquian
hunter consisted of a bow, arrows, a quiver, and a wrist guard. Bows were made of witch hazel. “English records say nothing of sinew backing
or other strengthening devices. As with
other forms of Powhatan woodworking, the wood for a bow was worked by scrapping
it with a shell. Bowstrings were made from
deer gut or from twisted thongs of deer hide.
… John Smith wrote of arrows made
of ‘straight young sprigs’ headed with a bone head two or three inches long,
which were used against squirrels and birds.”
He observed that some arrows were in several parts: a reed shaft, a
wooden foreshaft, and a head. Arrowheads
were variously made of ‘splinters’ of ‘christall’ or stone, wild turkey spurs,
sharp bird bills, splinters of deer bone, ‘an oysters-shell,’ or ‘the ends of
Deeres hornes.’” Stone arrowheads are
mentioned in detail only by William Strachey, Secretary of Jamestown in
1609. He wrote that they were “‘in the
forme of a heart’ barbed and jagged. The
majority of points … that have been found archaeologically are small and
triangular. Stone projectile points were
‘made … quickly’ with a small piece of antler that hung from the hunter’s wrist
guard, and they were bound onto their shafts or foreshafts with deer sinew and then
glued with a waterproof glue made of deer antlers boiled down into jelly. The overall length of Powhatan arrows was
about forty-five inches, and they were fletched with turkey feathers cut to
shape with a sharpened reed knife. The
nock of the arrow was grated in, using a hafted beaver tooth” (Rountree 42).
Powhatan bows were strong enough to shoot arrows 40 yards
with accuracy and 120 yards at most without accuracy. Quivers “were tubular containers more than
two feet long and made ‘of small rushes.’
Wrist guards … were made of the tanned hides of wolves, raccoons, or
foxes” (Rountree 42, 44).
Here is John White’s painting of a Carolina Algonquian
hunter. http://www.firstcolonyfoundation.org/history/images/white_01.jpg
Work cited:
Rountree, Helen C. The
Powhatan Indians of Virginia Norman , Oklahoma , University of Oklahoma
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