John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"In any case," Bertrand offered, " 'tis too early for tears and cheers alike. If Drakepecker hath his way we may all go free; if not, we may burn yet."

His companions agreed, and they fell to speculating on the office and influence of the ancient Indian who had been so loath to see them freed. McEvoy called in the African named — as best their English speech could approximate — Bandy Lou, who replied to their several questions with a huge, invincible smile whether his information was cheering, distressing, or indifferent.

Who was the old Indian king?

"He is the Tayac Chicamec, King of the Ahatchwhoops, and for four-and-eighty summers an enemy to Englishmen. This is his island."

Upon Ebenezer's inquiring about the division of power between the three kings and the jurisdiction of each, Bandy Lou replied that Quassapelagh was a sort of commander-in-chief of all the disaffected Indians on the western side of the Chesapeake, Chicamec held the same post on the Eastern Shore, and Drepacca was the king of the runaway Negroes. He went on to assert very candidly that, while in theory the three were invested with equal authority, it was Quassapelagh, the Anacostin King, who wielded the greatest actual power, not only because the chieftains under him — Ochotomaquath of the Piscataways, Tom Calvert of the Chopticoes, and Maquantah of the Mattawomans, for example — were more numerous, influential, and belligerent than were Chicamec's lieutenants, but also because some of the latter — such as the son of the Emperor Umacokasimmon, Asquas, whom Governor Copley had deposed as leader of the Nanticokes in favor of the complaisant Panquas and Annoughtough — were more disposed to follow the younger, more vigorous Quassapelagh than their aged commander-in-chief. Moreover, the lion's share of potential power, according to Bandy Lou, was held by Drepacca, for although there were many more belligerent Indians than runaway Negroes, Quassapelagh's authority was limited necessarily to the Province, and the allegiance of his subjects, except for a small group of Piscataways, was directed primarily to the several tribal chieftains and only indirectly to the Anacostin King himself. Drepacca, on the other hand, had in a very short time become the direct and undisputed leader of every fugitive African in the area and the inspiration of thousands still enslaved; furthermore, he had not the obstacles of tribal geography and rival leadership to contend with: Negroes from various African tribes were distributed indiscriminately among the provinces by the slave market, and Drepacca, so far as anyone knew, was the only royalty among them. In consequence of these facts, together with his quick intelligence (he had learned the Piscataway dialect in three weeks from Quassapelagh), his formidable personal appearance, and the advantage his being neither white nor Indian gave him in negotiations with the French and the northern nations, the sphere of Drepacca's influence grew daily more extensive and might well encompass soon the entire Negro population of America, whose number increased with every ship from the western coast of Africa. One guessed, from the unbounded pride in his voice, that Bandy Lou had already crowned his master Emperor of America. Ebenezer shivered.

"More power to him," McEvoy said grimly. "If Dick Parker's as strong as all that, we've naught to fear from this Tayac Chuckaluck, or Chicken-neck, or whatever. Wouldn't ye say so, Bandy Lou? 'Tis a brace of big men against one little one."

Ah, now, the smiling Negro cautioned, things were not so simple as that, for while Chicamec held in truth a great deal less power, actual or potential, than did either of his confederates, he was known to Indians all up and down the provinces as an ancient foe of the white man: he was virtually a legend among them; his name for three decades had been synonymous with uncompromising resistance; and in addition his little town of Ahatchwhoops was the hardest core of armed and organized English-haters in the Province, and his island the safest and most nearly central location anyone knew of for a general headquarters. In short, though but a figurehead, he was an extremely valuable one, and his colleagues deferred to him in all but the most important matters of policy — the more readily since nine tenths of the rebels' power was in their hands.

"I'faith!" cried Bertrand. "D'ye mean they might let him burn us after all?"

"I do hope not," said Bandy Lou agreeably. One of the other guards called to him in dialect from outside, and he added, his smile unchanged in magnitude or character: "Come now, and we shall learn."

For the second time that morning, then, Ebenezer, Bertrand, and McEvoy were escorted onto the misty common. Though there was light aplenty now, the sky remained overcast, and the foggy salt marsh scarcely less gloomy than before. The cooking fires were out, the women occupied with various housekeeping chores, and most of the men, presumably, out on the marshes and waterways replenishing the supply of seafood and wildfowl. A few dozen, whom Ebenezer took to be minor chieftains and their lieutenants, still sat with their pipes about the larger council-fires, engaged in debate; it was not difficult to guess, from the stony countenances that followed the prisoners' march across the common, what had been the subject of their discussion.

Less apprehensive than before, the poet was able to look about him with greater interest and detachment. He remarked, for example, that the village was considerably larger than he had estimated: the muskrat-house dwellings numbered more nearly three hundred than one hundred, and work-parties of Negroes were constructing new ones around the whole periphery of the town. Indeed, the supply of high ground was exhausted, and the builders were obliged to resort to various expedients; at one edge of the village was a flat-topped mountain of oystershells — piled up, one gathered, by generations of Ahatchwhoops in the days before building lots were at such a premium — which the Negroes were busily shoveling into the adjacent marsh, both to create new ground and to clear the old; in other places the huts were being erected on low pilings in the marsh itself, a curious combining of African and Indian architectures. Again, the poet observed for the first time the disproportion of sexes in the population: even allowing for the exaggeration of fear, he judged that nearly a thousand men had thronged the common that morning — seven hundred at the very least, of whom surely no more than two hundred had arrived with Quassapelagh and Drepacca — whereas the women, unless great numbers of them had been granted the unlikely privilege of sleeping late into the morning, could be counted more easily in dozens than in hundreds. Yet there seemed to be no shortage of children; indeed, the spaces between the huts fairly swarmed with little savages, whose great number and various pigmentation suggested to Ebenezer not only polyandry but a cultural alliance in spheres more intimate than either politics or architecture.

This time the party did not stop at the stakes, but proceeded directly to the royal hut on the opposite side from the jail. To the old Captain, who regarded them as sullenly from his stake as did the chieftains from their councils, Ebenezer called, "Never fear, old man, we shan't betray you. 'Tis all of us or none."

"In a pig's arse," muttered Bertrand beside him, and McEvoy added flatly, "Ye may stake your own fortunes where ye please, but not McEvoy's. If he dies on my account I'll mourn him sorely, but if I die on his I'll hate his guts." As for the Captain himself, either he did not hear the poet's encouragement, or was too unhinged by fear to comprehend it, or simply discounted it, for his expression remained unchanged.