The Macbeths
By MacbethiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Macbeth
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-0867-4 Chapter One
The Timucua Resistance is futile. We will assimilate you. The Borg, Star Trek: The Next Generation
They were the native tribe of prehistoric North Central Florida. When Europeans arrived in Florida, sweeping out prehistory and towing history in their wake, the natives had been here for at least twelve thousand years. To the armed European businessmen, the natives' prior claims seemed ill-established. Consequently, when the Spanish failed to secure written documentation of ownership from the illiterate residents, European custom allowed them to begin an inventory of everything within sight.
As one consequence of that inventorying, the native tribe became the Timucua, for cataloguing purposes. No one knows what the people called themselves. The name "Timucua" is rumored to have been derived from the advice of an Atlantic coast Timucuan who, feeling some animosity toward his inland kin, pointed an armed Spanish delegation westward, indicating the land of "timucua." Apart from this piece of folklore and an oblique historical reference, we do know that the sound made in pronouncing "timucua" closely resembles the native word for "enemy." It's not what they would have called themselves, obviously, but they are apparently extinct and unable to correct the misnomer.
The Spanish wielded metal weapons, disease, and Catholicism—not necessarily in that order—to extinguish the natives. Modern sensibilities see no logic in extinguishing such a naturally noble people; the new world offered bountiful resources for all, and the natives historically took from those resources only sparingly and with respect. The Spanish saw the Timucuan as primitive and not quite human. Certainly, by modern standards, social interaction between native tribes, largely trade by war, seems primitive, but it's important to remember that this was also the standard European method for international trade.
Other than that, the two cultures, European and Native American, had little in common. The goals of war for the Spanish, French, and English were very different from the Native American goals in the same endeavor. The Europeans tended to view war's purpose as land conquest and domination. Whereas, for the natives, war was just an available means of acquiring domestic accoutrements like pots, nice clothes, livestock, and mates—the earth itself was not something that could be owned by men.
The fact that the two cultures were so tremendously different was the cause of much irritation and confusion from the outset, mostly for the Europeans. For instance, while the Timucuan people had a clear division of labor along gender lines (there was women's work, and there was men's work—a concept that any Spaniard could appreciate), a Timucuan could essentially opt for a different gender role. A female who chose the path of a warrior was no longer treated as a female but as a male. She would sit at council meetings, smoke the local tobacco, and go to war and the hunt. It was not unusual for a female to be cacique or chieftain, if her family was connected. On the other hand, a male who chose the path of caring for children, doing fieldwork, and making pots and baskets would not participate in the council or be called on to go to war. When a Timucuan opted out of a gender role, he didn't necessarily become homosexual (although homosexuality was not unheard of). The choice of sexuality was a separate and unrelated choice to which no social stigma seems to have been attached. Employments as cacique, shaman, midwife, or herbalist were career options that knew no gender or sexual parameters and were highly respected offices on par with any tribal leader.
Additionally, the Timucua family line descended matrilineally. If a man married the cacique's daughter, he married into the cacique's family but not his wife's clan, from which power descended. Consequently, the cacique typically spent a lot more time with his eldest nephew than with any of his sons.
It is not surprising that the Spanish had a particularly difficult time with this concept, and early attempts at securing European-style political marriages were doomed to failure. Timucuan nobles mostly came from the Deer clan and yet routinely married outside that clan. This meant any progeny of such a union would not be of the royal bloodline.
The basic difference in perspective was displayed from first contact. In those first formal meetings, the Spanish were insulted that the natives sent so many women to meet with them, and they had difficulty discerning which of the men were in charge. The Timucua were perplexed and a little suspicious when they saw only men in the Spanish delegation; to them, it looked more like a war party than a peaceful delegation.
The Spanish solution to these cultural differences was to send in the Franciscans to smooth things over. Those ambitious monks strove to correct all the native practices and traditions, believing that, when there were no more heathens, there would be no more heathen problems. Again, modern sensibilities might reason that extinguishing a people's language, traditions, and practices would ultimately extinguish them as a people. This would have been a rather simplistic observation to the Franciscans, perhaps even a goal—certainly not a limiting consideration.
Another factor of the disparity between the cultures was in height and appearance. The average Spanish soldier or priest was between five feet two and five feet four, stumpy, and hairy. The average Timucuan is believed to have been around six feet tall, muscular, and well-formed. The French artist Jacques le Moyne described them as an exceptionally handsome people, an observation he would not have made about the Spanish. The Timucuan people dressed scantily, displaying hairless bodies decorated in colorful tattoos. Some friction between the groups would seem obvious and inevitable.
In all, it took about two hundred years—from the mid-fourteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century—for the Spanish to complete the extermination of the Timucuan people. When the Spanish left Florida, harried by the advance of the British and French forces into northern Florida, they took the few remaining Timucuan with them to Cuba as slaves. It was in Havana that the last known Timucuan, the half-Spanish Juan Alonso Cabale, died in 1767.
Chapter Two
Muqbey
Muqbey ran his thumb through a familiar valley on the blade's flat surface, feeling the momentary comfort of its smoothness. The blade was old; the father of his mother had made it and given it first use. The blade had been larger then and chipped as an axe for battle. For Muqbey, it had served as a skinning knife until that day.
His attention crept back to the strangers. They do not fight like men, he thought. They apply themselves to war in the same way other men toil in the fields: patiently, with resolve, and without passion, exhibiting cold-blooded precision rather than abandonment. They wield metal weapons and cut down the Timucua as they cut down the ancient ones in great numbers, leaving the earth unprotected. They violate all laws of nature and persist in robbery, deception, and affronts to the ancient ones. Nothing affects their direction or attitude.
Muqbey looked at the broken chert blade he clutched in his hand before angrily pitching it into the dark toward the river. He heard it strike a tree and then skid among the fallen leaves close by.
Our knives break against these strangers, Muqbey thought, and they have captured the wind and fire to kill us with.
He squatted and peered into the darkness toward where he had last heard the blade. He could see nothing in the blackness; the blade would be lost. His vision turned inward to persistent thoughts.
He had always seen them coming, these strange small men, not just because of their huge and blundering approach or through the fear of his cousins who'd run before them but because of the spirits in his dream. His dream was as large as the world and filled with smoke, clouds, blinding lights, strange voices, and frightening cries. Talking to others about it only made it less comprehensible; sometimes the spirits' meaning might be grasped in his dreams, but there were no human words to relate it to others. When Muqbey was awake, everything about these dark men confused him; and while he'd long known of their coming, nothing could have prepared him for their arrival.
Just now and for four days, he had repeatedly struck against these dark men with the other members of his clan. He had plunged into raid after raid with hundreds of his kin running beside him. Many times, Muqbey had seen the arrows of his clan strike the small dark men and bounce off harmlessly, while many of his uncles and cousins, and even his brother Tekimme, had fallen in the battles. They were men of his mother's blood—strong men and tall, much larger than the dark invaders.
But the strangers' size does not speak a weakness, Muqbey realized, and there must be a weakness in these men. They are not spirits, I have seen them die.
He stared blankly into the woods, seeking the reassuring sound of the swiftly moving river and the soft forms of the forest dimly moonlit through the canopy. These familiar things offered him both flight and shelter in the battle that filled his thoughts. He wished he had not thrown his old blade so hastily.
Muqbey failed to notice the soft approach of his sister until she intentionally broke off a small branch nearby.
"Brother who thinks too much," she began as he turned to her, "the frown on your face tells me it is not the ancient ones you commune with."
Muqbey looked at his sister, who had been born only moments before him but had become a warrior a full winter before him. Willful and strong, she was close to his heart and the source of great pride for him, but even with her, he sometimes found it difficult to explain his thoughts.
"I am thinking of how to turn away the strangers," was all he said.
"I know this, Muqbey, but you should come to the fire. The strangers are far away and too slow to catch us. Our sentries watch for their beasts on and across the water." She motioned toward the river. "Come and talk with us at the fire, away from the mosquitoes. Let us talk with each other of what we have seen in battle."
Muqbey nodded his assent. Cofitiqui was a wise one. She knew the ways of war and the hunt. Cofitiqui's early choice to be a warrior had changed her status from woman to man in the tribe, and in battle, she been more notable than any other tribesman. The pride that Muqbey had in his sister was boundless. Cofitiqui was his other half. More, she was already looked to in council for her advice, both in war and in peace. She was a bold and intelligent warrior; she was thoughtful yet afraid of nothing.
Cofitiqui touched his arm and turned to move away. Muqbey turned and silently followed her the short distance to the fireside to join their wounded brother, Tekimme, and two more experienced warriors, Tonochi and Powatay.
After they gave welcoming nods, several moments of silence passed before anyone spoke.
"We understand that you are worried, Muqbey, and it is true that we are all worried," said Tonochi, the younger of the two experienced warriors, "but you must see that these men have offended all of the spirits of the earth. I believe that it is they who should truly be worried."
Muqbey was staring into the fire now. He knew that they wanted him to speak the wisdom of his dream. As he searched the flames for the spirits' voices, he spoke slowly.
"Do you think they worry, uncle? Do you believe they are afraid of the earth or the air or the water?"
"It may be that they are not afraid," said Powatay, "but their ignorance cannot protect them from the spirits' wrath. They will surely die from it soon."
"That also may be true, one-who-taught-me-to-kill-a-bear." Muqbey's eyes were fastened on the dancing flames so that their light also danced in his eyes as he spoke. "But what do men know about the revenge of the Earth's spirits? In what time will that come, my uncle? Will we be dead and our children enslaved many years before that time?"
"The spirits of the Earth are stronger than any man, Muqbey." Cofitiqui's voice snapped at Muqbey's impertinent tone. "Their revenge is more certain than our lives or the lives of our children. The earth will have justice, though it may be that our children will find their only joy in the horrible fate of hateful masters."
There was more silence around the small fire for a moment. Each one of them was lost in thought.
"What did you see in these battles, Cofitiqui?" Tekimme asked his older sister, hoping to soften the tension and return to the focus of their discussion.
Cofitiqui reached into the fire with a stick and pushed back a glowing coal that had rolled from the pile.
"I saw that they were waiting for us this last time, this day. They knew that we would come back. They had prepared against our raid."
"Yes," Tonochi said, "I saw this too. They had built their wall of the ancient ones and hidden within it."
The others all nodded solemnly. The idea that men would wantonly cut downtheancientonesateachcamptheymadewithoutpermission—showing no respect and offering nothing in return—and go without punishment seemed remarkably unfair to them. Where was the earth's justice in this?
"It's as though they have no soul," said Tekimme, solemnly.
For some reason, this comment made Muqbey angry. He bristled visibly and turned from the flames to face his younger brother.
"Do you think they are greater than us then?" Muqbey waved his hand in disgust, dismissing what Tekimme had said. "They make a great noise, but they are protected by their armor and their beasts." Tekimme's dispirited tone had incensed Muqbey. "Do not think they are spirits. They are men, not a tribe of hororo in human form."
Tekimme was not cowed by his older brother's words. The last four days had tested him as a man, and even his disabling wound spoke nobly of that. His response was even and measured. "I have seen them die, just as you have. Muqbey."
"What do you think, Muqbey? Do you think that they are spirits?" asked Cofitiqui suddenly. "Do you speak of your dream now?"
Muqbey was caught off guard by his sister's penetrating wisdom. She always seemed to know his heart, even before he did. He had no ready answer for her.
"Yes, what of your dream, Muqbey?" asked Powatay. "What does your dream tell us of these strangers? Does it tell us how to defeat them? You must tell us."
"My dreams are just dreams, uncle," said Muqbey. "They cannot drive the atulu into the stranger's hearts."
"Yes, of course. I would be happy to supply the killing myself, but what does the dream tell you that could help me?" Powatay persisted.
"You do not want my dream, clansman. It is enough for one man."
"But this dream tells you of the strangers, Muqbey. What do the spirits say?" Tonochi's curiosity had also been aroused by talk about Muqbey's dream. Although many of the tribe knew of his dream, Muqbey rarely chose to discuss it. Not all things that are given by the spirits to a man can be shared with others; this was understood by everyone. But when the first of the cousins fleeing the coast had arrived in Muqbey's village, those who knew a little of the young man's dream had wanted to know more. Many things were changing, and no one understood the changes.
The tall young warrior looked away from his tribesmen and into the smoldering fire.
"My dream is one dream—many parts over many nights that make just one vision. The same dream over and over. This dream can only tell me of the horror these men bring. Some of the things they tell me, you have seen them with your own eyes." He paused as he thought about it. How would he speak of what his dream told him?
"But you saw them before the strangers came, before word came of them," Tonochi remembered. "I heard you speak of these dark men and their beasts before morning council two or three winters ago."
"And even when he was still small," added Powatay as he turned to look at Muqbey. "You saw them many times before those-who-flee came to us."
"Yes," Muqbey agreed. "I did see them ... and their power and their greed." He turned to Tekimme. "I am sorry that I was rude to you, little brother, because in my dreams, these men do not care about their souls, and it seems to me as well that they have none." His eyes moved to meet his sister's steady gaze. "And yes, I will talk of my dream if I can find the words that the spirits used to speak to me. If you think it will help."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Macbethsby Macbeth Copyright © 2011 by Macbeth. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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