Kahnawake, Quebec, May 1713

I was a child, a green plum, plucked

from my house and carried 

on the broad shoulders of Hatironta

through ice storms, drifts, and snow’s burning glare 

to the place of rapids. I clung to him 

like a possum hugging its mother. 

His snowshoes skimmed deep drifts, 

leaving fish tracks in the snow.

He treated me tenderly, not like Father, 

whip-stern, who preached God’s wrath 

lest our souls twist like spindled yarn in Satan’s fire.

Today, my husband comes with me 

to the priest’s house to meet 

the white men sent by my father. 

Francois, who played his flute for me 

at strawberry time, comes to protect me, 

to keep them from stealing me back. 

I sit straight as a pole.

I have come, I will listen, 

but I will not bend. They beg me 

to come home. My face is set. 

My heart is a whetstone. Knife-sharp, 

my tongue finds speech: 

I would go if Father had not remarried.

I belong to the flint tribe now,

keepers of the Eastern door,

people of the wide trail. Surely

my braids slick with bear grease, 

my skirt and buckskins stitched 

with quills tell them Eunice Williams 

is ash in the wind, a ghost, 

my English tongue dead as a stick.

I am A’ongote—“She Has Been Planted,”

reborn by swift water. 

I am a blossoming plum tree. Here, 

grandmothers rule the long house, 

cornfields and clan. Here, 

priests worship a great Mother. 

Will I go home?

No. I will not go back.

You cannot transplant a tree twice.

—

* Eunice Williams, daughter of Puritan minister John Williams, was only six when she and her family were captured during the Deerfield Raid of 1704. French and Mohawk warriors marched them to Kahnawake, Canada where she became a Mohawk. She adamantly refused to return to Massachusetts until after her father died.