Gunpowder and Tea Cakes: My Journey with Felicity

I suggest we explore the maze. I went through a corn maze once, and it was a blast. Susan leads us through a gate that leads into the maze. This maze isn’t made of cornstalks, but with smoothly sheared hedges, which are planted to form narrow walkways. They’re thick and much taller than me. Susan says there’s lots of paths inside with many turns and dead ends. Why don’t we each go our own way and see who can reach the center first.

I’m sure Susan has been through before since she lives at the Palace, so she probably knows how to get to the center quickly. But, I still like puzzles, and maybe I can beat Elizabeth and Felicity. We walk into the maze and each go a different direction. It’s cool and shady here, and birds are chirping. Sometimes the branches brush against my arms, and I slow down so I don’t damage the Coles’ dress. I can hear the other girls giggling or calling out to one another. Some voices coming closer, others fading away. Then, Susan calls out she’s in the center.

That didn’t take long! Just as I expected. I shrug and turn to walk down a long corridor that seems to lead to the center. But then I hit a dead end. I retrace my steps, make another choice, and hit another dead end. One of my stockings starts falling down, and I stop to tie it back in place. Suddenly, I hear a whisper of a conversation, but it’s a man’s voice.

A man says that Dunmore promised peace to their people if the four of them stay in Williamsburg. Another man scoffs. They’re not guests, but hostages. If the Shawnee fight the colonists who continue to steal land on the frontier, Dunmore will make them pay. The men are outside the maze, on the other side of the hedge. I’ve gone as still as a stump, crouched down, straining to hear what they’re saying. These must be the Shawnee men Felicity told me about. The first man says if Dunmore continues to feel threatened, he won’t stay in the city. Then what would happen to them?

A third man speaks up and says the should leave and go back to the Shawnee, now. Another man protests they should wait to see what happens. The whole tribe could suffer if Dunmore believes they’ve broken their promise. I spot a tiny opening in the hedge and slowly lean close. Through the branches I can see the Indian men, and my breath catches in my throat. They’re wearing leather leggings and moccasins, but not shirts. The man closest to me has shaved most of his head, leaving a long black ponytail in back. His scalp and forehead and stained red with either paint or dye, in dark lines and triangles. He wears a silver ring in his nose and big rings in his earlobes. He looks intense.

He says the Patriots won’t back down. They should form an alliance with Long Knives and help them drive the British back to Britain. They start to walk away, and then I can no longer hear anything. “Long Knives” must mean the colonists. We learned in school that the Shawnee people sometimes fought the pioneer colonists who wanted to move west and take their land. It sounds like these men are trying to figure out whether they should join the Patriots, stay loyal to the British, or go home. They realize war is coming.

Before I came back to 1775, when I thought of the Revolutionary War, I thought of the colonists fighting the British. But I realize the war was a lot more complicated than that. There were Patriots and Loyalists and people who just wanted to be left alone. There were enslaved people and free black people. There were Cherokee people and Shawnee people, and many other Native Americans. All of them had to make life and death decisions about their future without knowing what would happen.

I wish I had a notebook and pen because my time here is giving me lots of good ideas about my persuasive essay about citizenship. Suddenly, I hear Felicity calling my name. I call back that I’ll find the center. My homework can wait. I won’t forget a single moment of my adventure in 1775.