Weetamoo: Heart of the Pocassets

NEEPUNNA KEESWOSH
MOON WHEN CORN IS RIPE
[LATE AUGUST, 1653]
METTAPOISET

He [Father] laid his hand gently on my shoulder and told me that if I, Weetamoo, am to become sachem of us Pocassets after him, and prove a good leader, I must learn to walk more carefully through the world.

I shook my hair out of my eyes and stared up at him in surprise. I said he surely could not mean that I was poor at tracking game or at passing unseen through the woods. He knows I can follow almost any trail, and he has seen for himself how I can edge my way near enough to a doe and her pair of speckled fawns to hear their three separate breaths. Did he not teach me all these skills himself, I spluttered, and was I not better at it than any boy or girl in our village?