" St. Lawrence River
May 1705
Temperature 48 degrees

From the river they walked back to the town, and the boy was taken into the fire circle outside the powwow’s longhouse. Here he was placed on the powwow’s sacred albino furs. A dozen men, those who were now his relatives, sat in a circle around him. The powwow lit a sacred pipe and passed it, and for the first time in his life, the boy smoked.
Don’t cough, Mercy prayed for him. Don’t choke.
Afterward she found out they diluted the tobacco with dried sumac leaves to make sure he wouldn’t cough on his first pull.
Although the women had adopted him, it was the men who filed by to bring gifts. The new Indian son received a tomahawk, knives, a fine bow, a pot of vermilion paint, a beautiful black-and-white-striped pouch made from a skunk and several necklaces.
“Watch, watch!” whispered Snow Walker, riveted. “This is his father. Look what his father gives him!”
The warrior transferred from his own body to his son’s a wampum belt--hundreds of tiny shell circles linked together like white lace. The belt was so large it had to hang from the neck instead of the waist.
To give a man a belt was old-fashioned. Wampum had no value to the French and had not been used as money by the Indians for many years. But it still spoke of power and honor and even Mercy caught her breath to see it on a white boy’s body.
But of course, he was not white any longer.
“My son,” said the powwow, “now you are flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.”
At last his real name was called aloud, and the name was plain: Annisquam, which just meant “Hilltop.” Perhaps they had caught him at the summit of a mountain. Or considering the honor of the wampum belt, perhaps he kept his eyes on the horizon and was a future leader. Or like Ruth, he might have done some great deed that would be told in story that evening.
When the gifts and embraces were over, Annisquam was taken into the powwow’s longhouse to sit alone. He would stay there for many hours and would not be brought out until well into the dancing and feasting in the evening.
Not one of Mercy’s questions had been answered.
Was he, in his heart, adopted?
Had he, in his heart, accepted these new parents?
Where, in his heart, had he placed his English parents?
How did he excuse himself to his English God and his English dead?
The dancing began. Along with ancient percussion instruments that crackled and rattled, rasped and banged, the St. Francis Indians had French bells, whose clear chimes rang, and even a bugle, whose notes trumpeted across the river and over the trees. "

― Caroline B. Cooney , The Ransom of Mercy Carter