When the River Rises

By Sherry Raby

Little Snake, a young American Indian in the 18th century is called upon to do her duty and be the wife of the chief. 
When she seeks guidance and help from the river spirit, things begin to happen. 
Her father dies, her mother is remarried to her father's brother and it begins to rain. 
The village is destroyed and one man who has survived believes it is her fault that the river spirits have taken the lives and homes of her people, and he seeks revenge

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sherry Raby
• Release date: Oct 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781537423173

Sherry Raby

Sherry Raby: I grew up in a small borough in Central Pennsylvania, and still remain in a small borough in Central PA. I visited many different areas, and though winters can be harsh, I prefer the seasonal changes to no change. I've been writing since I was 14. The books back then weren't very good, but I've never lost the inner push to keep it up. I published a small children's story in Highlights magazine in the late 1970's. This was my first paid article. It took me almost 35 years of tears and hard knocks to get to where I could be able to publish a book. It was physically started about 10 years ago. Silent Screams by Sherry Raby. I am releasing When the River Rises. It's the stories of my ancestors through grandparent to grandparent to grandparent. I am married and have a total of eight children, and eleven grandchildren. I have migrated back to the hills of Northern Central Pennsylvania and find inspiration almost every day just by looking out my windows.

Book preview

This book is a compilation of stories passed down from father to son to son.

How much is true, I don’t know, but without my parents, especially my father, I would not be able to relate some of these.

My father is not with us any longer and he is sorely missed.  My mother still tries to keep parts of the stories alive.  Thank you mom and dad.

When the River Rises

Introduction

My great-grandmother would sit and tell us stories, seeing things in her mind that her unseeing eyes remembered. 

She often talked of her great-great grandmother Little Snake.  She told the stories of her marrying a White Man and surviving being scalped by her own people because they believed she was the reason the river became angry and destroyed their village.

I am sure the stories have taken many forms over the years and I can tell you truthfully, that I thought that’s what they were, just stories. 

My son was a senior in high school when he came home with a book and plopped it down in front of me.

Do you know that the stories you told us, about Princess Little Snake, are here?

He pointed to a chapter on the history of Pennsylvania.

And you thought I was lying.  I laughed.

I’ve since read many accounts of Pennsylvania history that tells of the tribes along the Susquehanna River, (Ga’-wa-no-wa’-na-neh, Gahinda) which means ‘great water island’, in the Onendaga dialect, but is translated from the Iroquoian as ’long, winding river’.

Many historians believe they were decimated by disease such as smallpox, and their being killed off by other Iroquois tribes.

There are stories of their migration from the Pennsylvania areas to further west and spreading out into present day Maryland New Jersey, and New York.

Some of the smaller tribes were wiped out by George Washington as he traveled through Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War.

Our area is rife with Indian folklore and I am proud to be a descendant of one of the areas more famous, and best remembered tribes that were known as the Tidewater people, or Susquehannock, relative to the Iroquois.

I was raised in a small borough called Shickshinny.  Its name loosely translated means, Land of Five Mountains.  It was home of one of the biggest Susquehannock tribes with about 200 people.

I lived on the mountain where there is still a revered plot of land that is believed to have been the burial grounds of which I have written.

No one knows who tends to this small plot of land, but it is always a verdant green with trees, and an over crop of boulders where the guards supposedly stood to watch over the souls of the warriors to make sure their journey to the spirit world was a safe one.

My great-great-grandfather was a medicine man, and many of the herbs used by him for healing, have been passed down through the generations. 

My great-grandmother died at the age of 95, give or take a year since she never had a birth certificate, but her stories still remain.

When the River Rises

Chapter1

Her long black braids moved restlessly over her chest as she bolted up from her reed mat and looked around the smoke filled hut, her horsehair blanket falling down around her waist.

This was her winter lodging.  All was familiar, yet there was an energy in the air that stirred a feeling of foreboding; a warning that echoed in her mind from the night dream she had.  It was too faint to capture, but too near to not feel apprehension.

Dark brown eyes darted about the area.  The familiar lumps, made from her brothers forms huddled next to each other, occupied the far corner of the room.  Her sisters were lined up beside each other at the opposite corner from her brothers.  Her parents, arms wrapped around each other in a quiet embrace, were on the far side of the cramped room where they could watch all the children and anyone coming or going from the hut. 

Lying back down, she listened to the hushed noises made by her mother and father as they enjoyed the company of each other’s arms and bodies.

Being the oldest, she had often awakened to hear the sounds of their lovemaking.  Laying awake, listening, feeling awe at the sounds, and conjuring up the pictures of them and trying to feel what it must be like to have hands touching herself as they were each other.  Her reveries seemed to fill many nights. 

She could not ask about the wonderings of coupling:  she did not want to be disrespectful.  She did, however, know of such things.  She had witnessed the horses as they created the foals that would come in the spring.  She had witnessed the deer, in the woods, and in their food plots, as they too created the fawns that would appear when the short days ended and the long days began.

The long days were her favorite.  The birds shadows on the ground as they hovered above, searching for their prey, and waking up the morning. 

The sounds of the grey squirrel as they chattered in the trees, sometimes scolding her for getting too close to their nests, and the small animals, identical to the old ones, but much smaller:  all were the sights of the long days to come and the yellow ball in the sky to give