There were two nervous white men serving food to the group squatting on the floor. There was an old man, the chief, with a carved, chunky body. Three warriors, one of them surprisingly young for council. And a middle-aged Negro, wearing the same bound-on rags as Franklin, except that they looked a little newer, a little cleaner.

Jerry bowed low before the chief, spreading his arms apart, palms down.

“I come from New York, from our chief,” he mumbled. In spite of himself, he was more than a little frightened. He wished he knew their names so that he could relate them to specific events. Although he knew what their names would be like—approximately. The Sioux, the Seminole, all the Indian tribes renascent in power and numbers, all bore names garlanded with anachronism. That queer mixture of several levels of the past, overlaid always with the cocky, expanding present. Like the rifle and the spears, one for the reality of fighting, the other for the symbol that was more important than reality. Like the use of wigwams on campaign, when, according to the rumors that drifted smokily across country, their slave artisans could now build the meanest Indian noble a damp-free, draftproof dwelling such as the President of the United States, lying on his special straw pallet, did not dream about. Like paint-splattered faces peering through newly reinvented, crude microscopes. What had microscopes been like? Jerry tried to remember the Engineering Survey Course he’d taken in his freshman year—and drew a blank. All the same, the Indians were so queer, and so awesome. Sometimes you thought that destiny had meant them to be conquerors, with a conqueror’s careless inconsistency. Sometimes…

He noticed that they were waiting for him to continue. “From our chief,” he repeated hurriedly. “I come with a message of importance and many gifts.”

“Eat with us,” the old man said. “Then you will give us your gifts and your message.”