Lying stretched in the boat with oars shipped, drifting and turning on the crooked lake, I took exact stock of my position in the world, and marked out my future.

These things were known: 

I was not an Indian.

I had been adopted into the family of Chief Williams.

Money was sent through an agent in New York for my support and education.

There were scars on my wrists, ankles, arm and eyebrow.

These scars identified me in Madame de Ferrier’s mind and Madame Tank’s mind as a person from the other side of the world.

I had formerly been deadened in mind.

I was now keenly alive.

These things were not known: 

Who I was.

Who sent money for my support and education.

How I became scarred.

What man had placed me among the Indians.

For the future I bound myself with three laws: 

To leave alone the puzzle of my past.

To study with all my might and strength.

When I was grown and educated, to come back to my adopted people, the Iroquois, draw them to some place where they could thrive, and by training and education make them an empire, and myself their leader.

The pale-skin’s loathing of the red race had not then entered my imagination.  I said in conclusion: 

“Indians have taken care of me; they shall be my brothers.”

VI

The zigzag track of the boat represented a rift widening between me and my past.  I sat up and took the oars, feeling older and stronger.

It was primitive man, riding between the highlands, uncumbered, free to grasp what was before him.

De Chaumont did not believe in and was indifferent to the waif whom his position of great seigneur obliged him to protect.  What did I care?  I had been hidden among the Indians by kindred or guardians humane enough not to leave me destitute.  They should not trouble my thoughts, and neither—­I told myself like an Indian—­should the imaginings of women.

A boy minds no labor in following his caprices.  The long starlit pull I reckoned as nothing; and slipped to my room when daylight was beginning to surprise the dancers.

It was so easy to avoid people in the spaciousness of De Chaumont’s manor that I did not again see the young Bonaparte nor any of the guests except Croghan.  They slept all the following day, and the third day separated.  Croghan found my room before leaving with his party, and we talked as well as we could, and shook hands at parting.

The impressions of that first year stay in my mind as I have heard the impressions of childhood remain.  It was perhaps a kind of brief childhood, swift in its changes, and running parallel with the development of youth.

My measure being sent to New York by De Chaumont, I had a complete new outfit in clothes; coat, waistcoat, and small-clothes, neckwear, ruffles, and shirts, buckle shoes, stockings of mild yarn for cold weather, and thread stockings.  Like most of the things for which we yearn, when I got them I did not like them as well as the Indian garments they obliged me to shed.