He paused to let that potent image sink in.

He raised his hands. 'It does not have to happen that way. A people as great as the Hodenosaunee, with its wise women and its wily warriors, a nation that every single person would gladly die for, as if for family – a people like this can learn to prevail over empires, empires in which only the emperors truly believe.

'How can we? you ask. How can we stop Niagara's water from falling?'

He made another pause, refilling the pipe and casting more tobacco on the fire. He passed the pipe out beyond the ring of sachems.

'Here is how. Your league is expandable, as you have shown already by the inclusion of the Shirt Weavers, the Shawnee, the Choctaw and the Lakota. You should invite all the neighbouring nations to join you, then teach them your ways, and tell them of the danger from the big island. Each nation can bring its own skill and devotion to the defence of this island. If you work together, the invaders will never be able to make headway into the depths of the great forest, which is nearly impenetrable even without opposition.

'Also, and most importantly, you need to be able to make your own guns.'

Now the attention of the crowd was fixed very closely. One of the sachems held up for all to regard the musket he had obtained from the coast. Wooden stock, metal barrel, metal trigger and sparking apparatus, holding a flint. It looked sleek and unearthly in the orange firelight, gleaming like their faces, something born not made.

But Fromwest pointed at it. 'Yes. Like that. Fewer parts than any basket. The metal comes from crushed rocks put in a fire. The pots and moulds to hold the melted metal are made of yet harder metal, that doesn't melt any more. Or in clay. Same with the rod you wrap a sheet of hot metal around, to make the barrel of the gun. The fire is made hot enough by using charcoal and coal for fuel, and blowing on the fire with bellows. Also, you can stick a wheel spinning in the river's flow, that will squeeze a bellows open and closed with the force of a thousand men.'

He went into a description of this process that appeared to be mostly in his own language. The something did something to the something. He illustrated by blowing on a glowing branch end held before his mouth, till it burst back into yellow flame.

'Bellows are like deerskin bags, squeezed over and over in wooden hands, wooden walls on a hinge,' flapping his hands vigorously. 'The devices can be pushed by the river. All work can be linked to the power of the rivers flowing by, and greatly increased. Thus the river's power becomes yours. Niagara's power becomes yours to command. You can make metal discs with toothed edges, connect them to the river, and cut through trees like sticks, cut trees longways into planks for houses and boats.' He gestured around them. 'A forest covers the whole eastern half of Turtle Island. Numberless trees. You could make anything. Great ships to cross the great seas, to bring the fight to their shores. Anything. You could sail there and ask their people if they want to be slaves of an empire, or a tribe woven into the league. Anything!'

Fromwest paused for another toke on the pipe. Keeper of the Wampum took the opportunity to say, 'You speak always of struggle and fighting. But the foreigners on the coast have been most friendly and solicitous. They trade, they give us guns for furs, they do not shoot us, or fear us. They speak of their god as if it is none of our concern.'

Fromwest nodded. 'So it will be, until you look around you, and find there are foreigners all around you, in your valleys, in forts on your hilltops, and insisting that they own the land of their farm as if it were their tobacco pouch, and willing to shoot anyone who kills an animal there, or cuts a tree. And at that point they will say their law rules your law, because there are more of them and they have more guns. And they will have permanently armed warriors, ready to go on the warpath for them anywhere in the whole world. And then you will be running north to try to escape them, leaving this land here, the highest land on Earth.'

He wiggled upwards to show how high. Many laughed despite their consternation. They had watched him take three or four giant pulls on the pipe, and they had all taken a puff themselves by now, so they knew how high he must be feeling. He was leaving them now, they could see it. He began to speak as from a great distance away, from inside his spirit, or out among the stars.

'They will bring disease. Many of you will die of fevers, and infections coming as if from nowhere, spreading from person to person. The diseases eat you from within, like mistletoe, growing everywhere inside you. Tiny parasites inside you, big parasites outside you, people living from your work even though they stay on the other side of the world, making you do it by the force of laws and guns. Laws like mistletoe! There to support the luxuries of an emperor around the world. So many of them that they will be able to cut down all the trees in the forest.'

He took a deep breath, and shook his head like a dog to get out of that dark place.

'Well!' he cried. 'So! You must live as if you are already dead! Live as if you are warriors already captured, do you understand? The foreigners on the coast must be resisted, and confined to a harbour town, if you can do it. War will come eventually, no matter what you do. But the later it comes the more you can prepare for it, and hope to win it. Defending a home is easier than conquering the other side of the world, after all. So we might succeed! Certainly we must try, for all the generations that come after us!'

Another long inhalation on the pipe.

'Therefore, guns! Guns big and small! Gunpowder. Sawmills. Horses. With these things alone, we could do it. And messages on birchbark. A particular mark for each sound in the languages. Make the mark, make the sound. Easy. So talk like this can go on all the time, at great distances in space and time, between speakers and listeners. These things are being done all over the other side of the world. Listen, your island is isolated from the other by such great seas, that you have been as on another world, all the ages since the Great Spirit made people. But now the others are coming here! To resist them you have only your understanding, your spirit, your courage, and the arrangement of your nation, like the warp and weft of your baskets, so much stronger than any mere gathering of reeds. Stronger than guns!'

Suddenly he looked up and shouted it to the eastern stars. 'Stronger than guns!' To the western stars: 'Stronger than guns!' To the northern stars: 'Stronger than guns!' To the southern stars: 'Stronger than guns!'

Many cried out with him.

He waited for silence again.

'Each new chief is allowed to ask the council of sachems, gathered to honour his raising up, consideration of some point of policy. I now ask the sachems to look at the matter of the foreigners on the cast coast, and at opposing them, by harnessing river power, and making guns, and pursuing a general campaign against them. I ask the sachems to pursue our own power over our affairs.'

He put his hands together and bowed.

The sachems stood.

Keeper said, 'That is more than one proposal. But we will take the first one into consideration, and that will cover the rest.'

The sachems gathered in small bunches and began to confer, Pounds the Rock talking fast as always, making a case for Fromwest, Iagogeh could tell.

All of them are required to be of one mind in decisions like this. The sachems of each nation divide into classes of two or three men each, and these talk in low voices to each other, very concentrated on each other. When they decide the view their class will take, one of them joins representatives from the other classes in their nation four for the Doorkeepers and the Swampers. These also confer for a while, while the sachems finished with their work consult with the pipe. Soon one sachem from each nation expresses that view to the other eight, and they see where they stand.