The Onondagas nations keep the council brand, and also the wampum into which the laws of the league have been talked, and now their powerful old sachem, Keeper of the Wampum, rose and displayed in his outstretched hands the belts of wampum, heavy and white. The Onondagas are the central nation, their council fire the seat of the league's councils. Keeper of the Wampum trod a pedestrian dance around the meadow, chanting something most of them heard only as a faint cry.

A fire was kindled at the centrepoint, and pipes passed around. The Mohawks, Onondagas and Senecans, brother to each other and father to the other six, settled west of the fire; the Oncidas, Cayugas and Tuscaroras sat to the east; the new nations, Cherokee, Shawnee and Choctaw, sat to the south. The sun cracked the horizon; its light flooded the valley like maple water, pouring over everything and making it summer yellow. Smoke curled, grey and brown turned to one. A morning without wind, and the wisps on the lake burned away. Birds sang from the forest canopy to the east of the meadow.

Out of the arrows of shadow and light walked a short, broad shouldered man, barefoot and dressed only in a runner's waist belt. He had a round face, very flat. A foreigner. He walked with his hands together, looking down humbly, and came through the junior nations to the central fire, there offering his open palms to Honowenato, Keeper of the Wampum.

Keeper said to him, 'Today you become a chief of the Hodenosaunee. At these occasions it is customary for me to read the history of the league as recalled by the wampum here, and to reiterate the laws of the league that have given us peace for many generations, and new nations joining us from the sea to the Mississippi, from the Great Lakes to the Tennessee.'

Fromwest nodded. His chest was marked deeply by the puckered scars of the Sioux hooking ceremony. He was as solemn as an owl. 'I am more than honoured. You are the most generous of nations.'

'We are the greatest league of nations under heaven,' Keeper said. 'We live here on the highest land of Longer House, with good routes down in all directions.

'In each nation there are the eight tribes, divided in two groups. Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle; then Deer, Snipe, Heron and Hawk. Each member of the Wolf tribe is brother and sister to all other Wolves, no matter what nation they come from. The relationship with other Wolves is almost stronger than the relation with those of one's nation. It is a cross relation, like warp and weft in basket weaving and cloth making. And so we are one garment. We cannot disagree as nations, or it would tear the fabric of the tribes. Brother cannot fight brother, sister cannot fight sister.

'Now, Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle, being brother and sister, cannot intermarry. They must marry out of Hawk, Heron, Deer or Snipe.'

Fromwest nodded at each pronouncement of Keeper, made in the heavy, ponderous tones of a man who had laboured all his life to make this system work, and to extend it far and wide. Fromwest had been declared a member of the Hawk tribe, and would play with the Hawks in the morning's lacrosse match. Now he watched Keeper with a hawk's intensity, taking in the irascible old man's every word, oblivious to the growing crowd at the lakeside. The crowd in turn went about its own affairs, the women at their fires preparing the feast, some of the men setting out the lacrosse pitch on the biggest water meadow.

Finally Keeper was done with his recital, and Fromwest addressed all in earshot.

'This is the great honour of my life,' he said loudly and slowly, his accent strange but comprehensible. 'To be taken in by the finest people of the Earth is more than any poor wanderer could hope for. Although I did hope for it. I spent many years crossing this great island, hoping for it.'

He bowed his head, hands together.

'A very unassuming man,' remarked Iagogeh, the One Who Hears, wife of Keeper of the Wampum. 'And not so young either. It will be interesting to bear what he says tonight.'

'And to see how he does in the games,' said Tecarnos, or Dropping Oil, one of Iagogeh's nieces.

'Tend the soup,' said Iagogeh.

'Yes, Mother.'

The lacrosse field was being inspected by the field judges for rocks and rabbit holes, and the tall poles of the gates were set up at either end of the field. As always, the games set the Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle tribes against Deer, Snipe, Hawk and Heron. The betting was active, and wagered goods were laid out by the managers in neat rows, mostly personal items of ornamentation, but also flints, flutes, drums, bags of tobacco and pipes, needles and arrows, two flintlock pistols and four muskets.

The two teams and the referees gathered at midfield, and the crowd bordered the green field and stood on the hill overlooking it. The day's match was to be a ten on-ten, so five passes through the gate would win. The head referee listed the main rules, as always: no touching the ball with hand, foot, limb, body or head; no deliberate hitting of opponents with the ball bats. He held up the round ball, made of deerskin filled with sand, about the size of his fist. The twenty players stood ten to a side, defending their goals, and one from each side came forward to contest the dropped ball that would start the match. To a great roar from the crowd the referee dropped the ball and retreated to the side of the field, where he and the others would watch for any infraction of the rules.

The two team leaders fenced madly for the ball, the hooped nets at the end of their bats scraping the ground and knocking together. Though hitting another person was forbidden, striking another player's bat with yours was allowed; it was a chancy play, however, as a mistaken strike on flesh would give the hit player a free shot at the gate. So the two players whacked away until the Heron scooped the ball up and flicked it back to one of his team mates, and the running began.

Opponents ran at the ball carrier, who twisted through them as long as he could, then passed the ball with a flick of his bat into the net of one of his team mates. If the ball fell to the ground then most of the players nearby converged on it, bats clattering violently as they struggled for possession. Two players from each team stood back from this scrum, on defence in case an opponent caught up the ball and made a dash for the gate.

Soon enough it became clear that Fromwest had played lacrosse before, presumably among the Doorkeepers. He was not as young as most of the other players, nor as fleet as the fastest runners on each side, but the fastest were set guarding each other, and Fromwest had only to face the biggest of the Bear Wolf Beaver Turtle team, who could counter his low and solid mass with body checks, but did not have Fromwest's quickness. The foreigner held his bat in both hands like a scythe, out low to the side or before him, as if inviting a slash that would knock the ball free. But his opponents soon learned that such a slash would never land, and if they tried it, Fromwest would spin awkwardly and be gone, stumbling forwards quite quickly for a big short man. When other opponents blocked him, his passes to open teammates were like shots from a bow; they were if anything perhaps too hard, as his team mates had some trouble catching his throws. But if they did, off to the gate they scampered, waving their bats to confuse the final gate guard, and screaming along with the excited crowd. Fromwest never shouted or said a word, but played in an uncanny silence, never taunting the other team or even meeting their eyes, but watching either the ball or, it seemed, the sky. He played as if in a trance, as if confused; and yet when his team mates were tracked down and blocked, he was always somehow open for a pass, no matter how hard his guard, or soon guards, ran to cover him. Surrounded teammates, desperately keeping their bat free to throw the ball out, would find Fromwest there in the only direction the ball could be thrown, stumbling but miraculously open, and they would flip it out to him and he would snare the ball dextrously and be off on one of his uncertain runs, cutting behind people and across the field at odd angles, wrong headed angles, until he was blocked and an opportunity to pass opened, and one of his hard throws would flick over the grass as if on a string. It was a pleasure to watch, comical in its awkward look, and the crowd roared as the Deer Snipe Hawk Heron team threw the ball past the diving guardian and through the gate. Seldom had a first score happened faster.