The design for the cover of my next book, my historical novel, Taken by the Shawnee just arrived from my publisher, Turtle Point Press. The image of Margaret shielding her eyes to peer into the distance is romantic—and romance is, of course, part of every novel that anyone wants to read. But in the case of my novel, the heroine (for Margaret is a heroine) brings in an almost lost sense of the romantic as necessarily part of courage. Where did her courage come from, this white woman who’d only known the limitations and hardships and prejudices of eighteenth-century colonial life in Virginia?
That’s a question we all ask ourselves when confronted with adversity. In Margaret’s case, her early decision to survive after being kidnapped, no matter what challenges she faced, was essential. Even after witnessing the murder of her husband and her child, she placed her faith in her decision, forgoing tears and complaints that would have been fruitless and would have brought reprisals. The Shawnee would not drag along a martyr, useless on their hard journey of many miles on horseback to their camp on the Ohio—a camp that was soon burned by colonial troops determined to exterminate the original inhabitants of the region. By the time I came along, many years later, it was said in Kentucky that there were no Indians without adding that they had been there for hundreds of years until murdered or driven out to Oklahoma.
Margaret quickly realized that she would have to be useful, not just another mouth to feed. She had two assets: she could sew calico shirts for the men, and she could read, offering the possibility of interpreting the treaties the Shawnee and other tribes sometimes signed without knowing what was in them. It didn’t matter because the treaties were always broken by the colonists—but that would not be known for a while.
And she had strengthened herself earlier by taking on more chores at her village: chores that demanded persistence and strength, such as hauling two pails of water from the spring on a yoke across her shoulders, not just for her mother but for other villagers. Her physical strength would serve her well as she joined the Shawnee women in planting, weeding, gathering wood for the fires and, of course, hauling water.
But above all, her success depended on her hopefulness. As the poet Nickole Brown describes it in her excellent new collection, To Those Who Were Our First Gods:
Hope, you know by now,
is not a thing you feel
bur something you do,
and this is your job.”
During her four years with the Shawnee, during fires, fighting and every form of violence, Margaret maintained her hopefulness, based on her limitless curiosity about the people with whom she was living and working, eating when there was game, starving when the Shawnee starved, fleeing when they fled, watching murders and torture—but never complaining.
You’ll be able to follow her adventures when my novel is published next April.
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