Summary
Colonial forests, half-lit by musket-flash and moon-oil, swallow infants whole: two mothers—Marie Loskiel, harried to death by St. Regis raiders, and Jeanne de Contrecoeur, clairvoyant wife of a French commandant—whisper their newborns into the wind, invoking the old Haudenosaunee rite of the “hidden child.” One babe, the boy Euan, is freighted into the gauntleted arms of English officer Guy Johnson; the girl Lois is smuggled past an Erie sorcerer’s obsidian blade by Jeanne herself, who then endures captivity, dream-interpreting her way into the fearsome title of White Sorceress. Years knot into seasons of secret moccasin gifts—each bead a breadcrumb—until the children, now flint-eyed adults, converge on the warpath of Sullivan’s 1779 scorched-earth campaign. Lois, disguised in tatters, shadows Lieutenant Euan Loskiel and the Mohican scout Mayaro toward Catherinestown’s palisades of nightmare; Euan, rifle balanced like a tuning fork, hears destiny hum when he recognizes the rag-clad wanderer as kin of spirit. Between ambush and dream-feast, the lovers submit to the White Bridal, an ancient rite that weds not only bodies but warring cosmologies. Arrows sing, Amochol falls, a mother is un-caged, and the hidden children step out of myth into a dawn that trembles between nations still unborn.
Synopsis
Two women unknown to each other, in the early history of the nation, decide to make of their babies "hidden children," in accordance with the Indian custom of giving children to foster-parents until maturity. A girl and a boy thus "hidden," when informed of the truth, returned to their people and were expected by marrying to bring a fresh spirit into the tribe. Marie Loskiel, hard beset by the St. Regis Indians, gives her child, Euan, before she dies, to Guy Johnson, an English Colonial officer. He and Mayaro, a Sagamore of the Mohicans, who is Johnson's chief scout, take charge of the child. Jeanne de Contrecoeur, wife of the commandant of the French garrison at Lake George, amuses the officers and their wives by her gift of clairvoyance. She implores her husband not to go out to battle with the Indians, as she has a premonition that he will be killed, and that the child to be born will never know a father. But duty calls Capt. de Contrecoeur, and he is slain by the Iroquois. Jeanne herself is captured by them, and taken to the stronghold of the Six Nations at Catherinestown. The Erie sorcerer Amochol is about to sacrifice Jeanne's new-born daughter, Lois, to the Moon Witch, but she makes of Lois a "hidden child," sending her to a colonist named Calvert. Jeanne is about to be killed by Amochol when she correctly interprets a dream for him, and she becomes the White Sorceress of the Iroquois. Each year Jeanne sends secretly to little Lois a pair of moccasins, embroidered with a symbol indicating that she is a hidden child. Calvert cannot read the inscription, but when he dies he tells Lois of her origin, and it becomes the girl's one thought to find the trail to Catherinestown where her mother is held captive. Euan Loskiel, grown to manhood, is given a commission in Morgan's rifles as Lieutenant and Chief of Indian Scouts. General Sullivan wishes to crush the tribes of the Six Nations in the "Long House" of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the only man who can lead him to Catherinestown is Mayaro the Sagamore, whom Euan brings to the General, and the Sagamore becomes the trusted messenger of the northern Colonial army. Lois disguises herself as a camp-follower in rags to follow Euan, Mayaro and Lieut. Boyd to Catherinestown. Mayaro saves her from the insults of a drunken officer, and though she has thus far distrusted all men, she has complete faith in the Sagamore. He reads the message of the moccasins, discovering that she is a hidden child, and protects her from all the mischances of the journey. Euan Loskiel falls in love with this strange girl in rags, but it is with difficulty that he wins her confidence, since, wandering alone since Calvert's death, she has seen nothing but the baser side of men's natures. Finally, however, her fears are stilled by Euan's nobility of character, and she, Euan and Mayaro, become close friends, the red man and Euan going through the sacred ceremonial of the blood brotherhood. Lois at last confesses her love for Euan, but will not permit his caresses until she has found her mother. She undertakes the perilous journey into the heart of the Iroquois empire, following the army secretly, since they will not consent to her accompanying them on such a dangerous mission. Mayaro, who shares the secret, blazes the trail so that she may find the way. When she overtakes them, the Indians insist that the ceremony of the White Bridal be performed over these two sacred "hidden children," Lois and Euan. They reach Catherinestown in time to witness the Feast of the Dreams. Amochol is about to put the White Sorceress of the Iroquois (Jeanne de Contrecoeur) to death for interpreting ill fortune. Her prediction comes true when the warriors of the Six Nations defeated by Sullivan's men return. The executioner is about to strike her when his arm is transfixed by a shaft from Mayaro's bow. The priests take Jeanne prisoner, but Euan and Mayaro, following them to the Vale Yndaia, kill them and rescue her, and Mayaro slays Amochol in hand-to-hand combat. Lois is at last folded in the arms of the mother who has watched and waited for her all these years, and then Jeanne de Contrecoeur, having been reunited with her "hidden child," puts her hand in that of the gallant scout, Euan Loskiel, and their White Bridal is completed.
