Manitou Plot

Manitou Plot

Genre: historical fiction, fantasy

prologue :

The Nissequogue tribe sachem (Standing Rock's) wife, Gentle Heart, dies during a hard season of drought and starvation. She leaves him with a son, named Yellow Eye.

- He is books antagonist and is named "YEllow Eye" after his striking golden hued eye (he has heterochromia.) later his manito (spirit guardian) will take the form of a yellow eyed black panther.

Standing Rock remarries with Crow Woman 2 years later, and they try to conceive another child.
However after 2 miscarriages amidst escalating tensions with the matinnecock * and ongoing drought, she is devastated, and remains childless.

*The conflict between the nissequogue and the mattinecock is due to a dispute over territory and resources. The mattinecock (led by a cold hearted sachem named bloody snake) refused to help the nissequogue during the time of great hardship - lack of sufficient food and water resources due to drought - despite having a surplus store of food and access to mascopas; a sacred fresh water spring in the heart of their territory. As a direct result of Bloody Snake's selfishness, Gentle Heart becomes very weak and when she falls ill during the long harsh winter that follows the drought, she dies.

Crow Woman finally becomes pregnant - and gives birth to - a baby girl, in mid- summer. The sachems first child; Yellow Eye (the baby girls' half brother) becomes jealous and despises the baby for both the attention she receives, and the threat she poses to his stake in power. As well as the fact that her mother "replaced" his and if only his mother hadn't died, the baby girl wouldn't exist.

- although the leader was generally selected based upon who was most fit for the job, the first born son of a sachem had a better chance of coming into leadership after his father. Female sachems (called sunksquaws) were less common, but not unheard of.

Yellow eyes becomes increasingly resentful, & plots to destroy the baby.

- This foreshadows his character development into the books' power hungry, malevolent and ultimately heartless antagonist. He displays textbook psychopathic traits throughout the book, starting with his chilling plot to murder his own baby half - sister.

Yellow eyes smothers the baby while he is entrusted to watch over her, and then lies to cover his tracks, telling Crow Woman that the baby must have rolled over onto her face and suffocated in the blankets. He displays a show of false grief, but internally, is - of course - remorseless.
Grief stricken, Crow Woman immediately takes her baby's body down to the river (despite a rising storm) with the intent to give her a "burial at sea." However she finds herself unable to watch her precious baby swallowed up by the water and instead eventually decides to leave her in the cattail reeds by the waters edge so the rising tide will carry her body away later on.
But as she finally walks away, a bolt of lightning suddenly strikes the child's body. As she stands there stunned she suddenly hears a faint wail - the child is alive! the massive amount of electricity - and the power of the manitou - shocked her heart back to motion.

- NOTE: obviously, this is probably not entirely realistic - which is why it is a historical *fiction* book, but it could be plausible which is an important component of the book : any so - called magical events can be explained by modern science or are *somewhat* believable, for example vision quests where they seek a spirit guide, "seeing" and "talking" to the spirit guide can be explained by hallucinations from fasting or ingesting psilocybin to produce visions, or in this case the electricity of the lightning can be likened to the shock of an electric defibrillator used by paramedics to shock heart back into motion. 
The baby girl is unharmed, bearing no physical damage as a result of the incident aside from a lichtenberg lightning scar down the length of her spine.