“The Metinnicuts, as you all know, lived here for hundreds of years before the European settlers came. We don’t know very much about them or how how they lived. We do know that they hunted for game—deer and rabbits and things like that—and they also ate a lot of shellfish.” He paused and looked at the children. “How do we know this?”
“Fossils?” asked a little boy with a fresh haircut.
“Good answer. But the Indians only lived here in the past thousand years or so. Fossils, bones that have turned to rock, are much older than that. But we do have archaeological evidence we’ve dug up. What do you think it is?”
Lucy knew Zoe knew the answer. They’d read about an archaeological dig in a children’s magazine last night. She nudged her, but Zoe remained silent.
“Arrowheads?” asked another boy, who was wearing a cub scout uniform.
“Yup.” Rumford nodded. “We have found arrowheads and spear points. What else?”
“Treasure chests?” guessed a boy in a plaid shirt. Lucy heard Zoe give a disgusted snort under her breath.
“No treasure.” Rumford shook his head. “What do you think we’ve found?” He was staring at Zoe.
She hesitated, and Lucy held her breath, willing her to find the confidence to answer. Finally, she did. “Shells and bones.”
Predictably, the boys hooted. The answer must be wrong because a girl said it.
“That’s right!” exclaimed Rumford, silencing them.
Inwardly, Lucy gave a silent little cheer for Zoe. She hoped her daughter would always be able to summon up the courage to give an answer, even a wrong one, but she knew the odds were stacked against Zoe. The older the little girl got, the harder it would become.
“We can tell a lot about what the Indians ate from their garbage piles. We find bones from animals they ate and big piles of shells. We also know from what’s in this box that they didn’t just kill animals. Sometimes, they killed people.”
He had the boys’ undivided attention as he opened the box and lifted out a decorated wooden object for them to see. It seemed to Lucy to be in two parts: a wooden shaft decorated with black designs that held a solid wooden ball.
“It’s a Metinnicut war club, used to bash out the brains of their enemies.”
“Yeah!” exclaimed the boy with the haircut.
“Yuck!” said Zoe, wrinkling up her nose.
“I’m going to put it back in the box and let you all take a look at it, and while you’re doing that, I want each of you to take a pair of these protective goggles. Then we can start making some flints, okay?”
Once Zoe was settled with her safety glasses and chipping away at her piece of flint, Lucy got up and wandered around the room, examining the displays that Rumford had brought from the museum. These were mostly points of all sizes—many of which would seem to be nothing more than bits of rock to untrained eyes. The war club, however, was undoubtedly something remarkable. Examining the workmanship, Lucy knew that it would have been difficult to produce anything like it even with modern woodworking tools. How could a native craftsman, working only with crude stone tools, make such a finely crafted weapon?
As she studied the war club, Lucy wondered about Metinnicut culture and all that had been lost. What had their garments looked like? Their houses? How had they managed to survive in such a hostile climate for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years? What did their language sound like? What were their songs and dances like? What games did their children play?
It seemed terribly sad to her that nothing remained of the Metinnicuts except for the war club. So much had been lost, impossible to recapture. She couldn’t help wondering how different American history might have been if the European settlers hadn’t considered themselves superior to the natives and had been willing to learn from them.
“Look, Mom! Look what I made!”
Zoe was standing next to her, holding a crude arrowhead in her small, plump hand.
“Wow! That’s neat.”
Lucy picked it up and turned it over. “Was it hard?”
“No, Mom. C’mon. I’ll show you.”
Lucy allowed herself to be led back to the table, where Zoe instructed her in the fine art of flintknapping. When they were through, she, too, had produced a passable arrowhead. When she finally looked up, she realized everyone else had gone.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, blushing. “Are we holding you up?”
“Not a bit,” said Rumford. “It’s great to see someone take such an interest.”
“It’s fascinating,” said Lucy. “It’s amazing when you think about it. We have refrigerators and freezers and cars and TVs and computers, and it’s a national emergency when the electricity goes out. These people lived so simply. . . .”
“Exactly,” said Rumford, starting to pack up. “And they were successful until disease, brought by the Europeans, wiped them out. They had no immunity to common illnesses like measles and smallpox.”
“Can we help you with this stuff?”
“Thanks,” he said. “We can go right out to the parking lot through the workroom next door. Saves going up and down the stairs.”
In a few minutes they had packed everything into plastic totes and gone out to the parking lot, forming a little parade. Rumford led, carrying a pile of boxes, followed by Lucy, who also had a stack of containers. Zoe was last, proudly carrying the box with the war club.
“It’s the gray van. It says Winchester College on the side.”
“W-I-N . . .” began Zoe, then stopped abruptly as Curt Nolan threw down his rake and approached them. He stopped in front of Zoe, towering over her.
“What you got there?” he demanded.
Zoe didn’t answer, but stepped closer to Lucy.
“Is it a war club?” Nolan bent down so his face was level with hers.
Zoe nodded.
“Aren’t you awful little to be carrying something so important?”
Nolan was no longer addressing Zoe. He had stood up and was talking over her head to Rumford.
Lucy started to speak, defending her child, but Rumford beat her to it.
“She’s a very
