Ceremony of Going to Water
not for ball play only.
And when The Animals played The Birds at ball,
Mr. Bat and Mr. Flying Squirrel were born.
Going to Water for us all.

We follow Mr. Animal.
He drink. He cross. He do it one.
He do it many, in his herds.
Mr. Animal make the path to water,
find where to get it, where to cross.
We follow Mr. Animal.

We watch The Mr. Gray Squirrel.
He take a chip of bark
to cross the water, use his tail for sail.

We watch the Mr. Deer.
We dress out in deer skin,
put Mr. Deer's antlers on our head,
move among the deer, be one with deer,
kill to eat, to get their skins.
Then come deer-skin trade.

We follow Mr. Animal.
We make The Trading Path,
trail through forests, crossing rivers,
like Mr. Animal upon low path.
But water sometimes angry.
We make high path, to, climbing to the ridge.

White man come among us,
move about as friend among us,
be let in our palisades.
White man want to trade.
We should have watched Mr. Possum,
played possum to the White Man.
We should have watched Mr. Groundhog,
seen the White Man's shadow.
We should have watched Mr. Sturgeon

sleeping on the surface of the water.
If you tried to take him, Mr. Sturgeon pulled you
in and down, fought until you drowned.
Mr. Sturgeon could have been
lesson about the White man.
White man was a beaver trap.
We sorry we fed him our choice beaver tail,
let him poison us as if with root of trumpet plant
like daughter of the Tutelo King
when she was the last of her nation.

We needed powder of the Bezoar Stone
from Mr. Deer's stomach
to throw in our eyes,
to make our sight and brains strong.
But the white man sent up
the smoke of green pine
to hide himself from us.

We became the white man's porter.
We could descend to fords better than his horse.

Many would trade, but Proud Occaneechi
have island village in the Roanoke,
command The Trading Trail,
do the whole fur trading.
Others tribes jealous of Occaneechi.
We could not be at peace among ourselves,
could not come together to make
a Mr. Bat, a Mr. Flying Squirrel.

White man shoot us but not to eat,
not just to get our skins.
White man want our everything,
our place upon the earth.

White man Bacon jealous,
defeat Proud Occaneechi.
They self-remove to Eno.
White man Lawson visit them
but see Occaneechi wrong.
They not have the plenty
of their days astride The Trading Path.
Occaneechi go to ground,
become remnants like other Indian

We made white man take
oath of secrecy about The Trading Path.
We made him dip in Swearing Creek.
But he was false.
He made the rest places on our Great Road,
brought more Whites behind him,
built his towns twenty miles apart
because White men could make
but twenty miles a day.
White man could not live on rockahominy.

And the worst was still to come.
White man give us contracts
for the fords and ferries
to catch runaway Black slaves,
indentured servants trying to get away.

Mr. Animal went, too. Mr. Buffalo.
The many cranes remembered in Crane Creek.
The great wild turkeys.
The bears so big and fat
the only way to bring them down
was to shoot them through the ears.

Oh, we wanted fom the white man
to "talk in that Book, make paper speak."
Why could we not settle for
reading from the Book of Nature?

Lynn Veach Sadler
Sanford, NC