“I am called Raleigh. Raw-lee.”
“Raleigh? Funny name.”
“You are truly clever, Usamequin. To think you learned basic English in only a month.”
“Sim... ple. You people, language like ours, speak.”
Usamequin gave a faint laugh and said to Raleigh and Vicente,
“Similar language, converse. English, converse. Same. Understand quick.”
“Excellent. Very excellent. To a friend who learns our language so quickly, we ought to give a gift.”
Rustle. Rustle.
When Raleigh took something out of his bag, Vicente hurriedly pulled out the Bible. As Raleigh placed a scepter in his hand and set a crown upon his head, Vicente recited a passage from the Bible and said,
“Do you now acknowledge Nemo of Croatoan as the Great Chief?”
“...Of course. If he is the wealthiest one.”
“Do you now swear to receive the gifts bestowed by Nemo of Croatoan, and to send gifts in return, thereby strengthening your faith and loyalty toward him?”
“Gifts... must continue.”
“Excellent! You are now Lord Nemo’s faithful vassal!”
Originally, he should have given the name of the Queen of England, but there was no way the Queen would send people all the way out here to check and have Raleigh’s head cut off for treason.
Raleigh confidently offered Usamequin a handshake and spoke in Algonquin.
“You are now our comrade as well. Let us work hard together for the Virginia community!”
“Well... not that I’ll ever have any reason to go there in my lifetime...”
“Who can say? Would you like us to give you a ride?”
Usamequin shook his head. He spoke not in English, but in his native tongue.
“This is my home, so I will not leave.”
“...”
“You said you call this place ‘Massachusetts,’ did you not?”
To be precise, Nemo had mentioned Massachusetts in front of them. The two of them merely remembered it.
“I will not leave Massachusetts. So you should go back.”
“...Then, farewell.”
Raleigh smiled and nodded to him.
“Glory to our emperor, Great Chief, angel—whatever you call him. I hope we meet again.”
And so Raleigh and Vicente left the shore and boarded the boat. Thus, they hurried on with their journey once more.
This was some time after they had left Chesapeake Bay.
***
“...”
“...”
“...”
The other Europeans and I were at a loss for words, staring intently at the map Manteo had colored in.
Many of the natives could not read maps, so they merely glanced at one another, not knowing what had happened.
But I could tell roughly from Manteo’s expression alone.
Even if the other chiefs had known how to read a map, they probably would not have been that greatly surprised.
To them, this would have been a “natural” situation.
We had organized a gift-exchange network with our enormous resources, and in proportion to that, we had succeeded in bringing countless tribes under our sphere of influence. All of it was an achievement accomplished with grapes, aluminum, and various other things.
...What is this? Why does my head understand it, but my heart refuses to accept it?
It felt similar to watching a children’s cartoon where the fate of the world was decided by card games or soccer.
No, I mean, no matter how delicious Shine Muscat grapes are, conquering a territory the size of South Korea with them?
That makes no sense.
“Ah, well, uh...”
“...You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t.”
“...”
“...”
But apparently, it was not nonsense.
Right. No matter how much it sounded like a lie, reality was still reality.
“Then... those outsiders who were sometimes loitering around whenever we held meetings?”
“They were people who gathered because they heard the ‘Great Chief’ had summoned an assembly. I explained the circumstances to them and sent them back, but they probably had their fair share of grievances. I will mark those people again with hatching.”
I see.
In any case, I barely managed to finish the meeting while holding on to my mind, which was trying to go blank again. Then, while looking over the maps of the various regions Manteo had colored in... I sighed.
“So for now, they have entered my ‘sphere of influence.’”
“That is correct.”
“But they are not members of our community.”
“That is also correct.”
They are within my sphere of influence, and they acknowledge me as the Great Chief, so am I their king?
No. To them, I am... uh...
Maybe something like the Secretary-General of the UN.
In other words, I have a presence that is there but not really there. It was simple when I thought about the fact that, until Oitotan called me the Great Chief, I had not even known I was one.
Can I, as Great Chief, demand that they fight for me? No. Then can I give them other orders as a monarch? Also no.
Whether chief or Great Chief, in this neighborhood, the position is somewhat close to an honorary one. Somewhere between a group project leader and a village headman, perhaps.
...At any rate, I had thought the amount of resources coming in was strangely large. So I had been distributing grapes across an area roughly the size of South Korea.
“Everyone, I missed you! How I longed for Chesapeake!”
“You would be astonished if you knew how many places we explored!”
“...Oh.”
And not long after I realized that fact, Raleigh and Vicente returned.
“Welcome back. Now you have to go to England.”
“...Pardon?”
“What? But I am Spanish.”
“Then Vicente can be excluded, and Walter alone can go.”
All sorts of spices, sugar, various small tools, clothes for the residents to wear, and so on... There were a great many things we needed.
After we thus released pearls, coral, and all manner of gems into England, and by the time Walter Raleigh returned, several more months had passed, and it was gradually becoming September.
September... the season of grapes...
Grapes overflowed in every direction.
This time, without worrying about freshness, we were able to harvest most of the grapes properly at their ideal time. And this time, the many varieties of grapes we had ambitiously cultivated anew!
Ruby Roman! My Heart! Cotton Candy!
In addition, countless premium grapes of the sort that could be delivered to department stores bloomed on Croatoan and the nearby islands!
Some varieties had originally been brought in while paying royalties, but now there was no one to collect those royalties! Neither the United States Department of Agriculture nor Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries could stop me!
“Now then, Walter! Please work hard once again.”
“...I spent half the year at sea.”
“As expected, Walter’s spirit of exploration is truly remarkable.”
And of course, the ambiguous climate of the North Atlantic could not stop me either!
Now I could send grapes picked at their proper harvest time across the sea in good condition!
With a pounding heart, calming my excitement as I thought, “I’m going to wreck every British noble’s gums,” I sent Raleigh off.
Raleigh complained about how difficult that clipper was to operate, the horrifying difficulty of steering it, and the labor of skilled sailors being ground down, among other things...
But all of those words merely led me to the conclusion that I had to send out a “skilled captain.”
“...In that case, I shall stay in England for a while this time before returning. It has been some time, so I suppose I should attend Her Majesty the Queen’s Accession Day banquet.”
I granted Raleigh his vacation.
And so Raleigh departed.
I sat for a while, eating the leftover Shine Muscat grapes and sinking into thought.
It was already my sixth year since arriving in this land. These were Shine Muscat grapes whose quality I had maintained with all my strength, constantly replanting them and even attempting flat-trellis cultivation.
Hmm, grapes.
Even if I am called the Great Chief, like the other Great Chiefs of this age, I am not someone with any particularly plausible real authority. To many people, the grapes I grow are probably closer and more familiar than I am.
As most grape farmers are to consumers.
Yes. I am nothing more than a grape farmer. Just a farmer whose target market is rather broad.
Thinking of it that way made me feel a little more at ease.
I chewed and swallowed another grape.
***
“Father, gems are growing rarer and rarer. Even the furs nearby are beginning to run dry.”
“Is that so?”
The drought continued. Farming had become difficult and hunting had become difficult, so it was no wonder that foxes, which provided fur, had grown rare.
And gems, too, did not grow like grass or animals, so if one kept picking them up and digging them out, their number was bound to decrease.
They could not live by clinging to things that were gradually disappearing.
“Father, why did our tribe abandon our former way of life? Why did we not throw away or burn the grapes and that thing called ‘potatoes’ offered by that so-called Great Chief, but instead accept them?”
“...To survive.”
The chief smiled at his son’s words as he spoke.
Originally, “gifts” had not been like this.
Originally, a “gift” was usually an occasion for sharing things that were more symbolic, valuable, and, to put it crudely, useless.
Such as exchanging necklaces made of coral and shells, or passing around splendidly decorated feather headdresses.
That was only natural, since people might have had time to spare, but they did not have food to spare. No one was that wealthy.
No one could, as they did now... casually hand out enough food for the members of a tribe to eat for several months and call it a “gift.”
No one could, as they did now, offer rare fruit to those suffering from drought and famine.
Whenever the “Great Chief” sent gifts, the people of this tribe found it hard to believe. In a situation where everyone was starving because they could not obtain food, those people endlessly produced countless fruits, as if they were shaping them out of the very earth.
After the envoys they sent left, from the chief down to the tribespeople, everyone devoured the potatoes and grapes in a frenzy.
What they had thoughtlessly accepted after receiving that enormous gift at the beginning had been the start of everything.
The pain of famine lasting several years, hunger, and disease had changed them once again.
Many tribespeople no longer bothered farming crops that would fail completely anyway, and instead simply roamed around looking for precious furs. It was easier to exchange those with the Great Chief for food and survive.
The days when they made ornaments for gifts in the time left over after farming and hunting were gone. Now, after making ornaments, if they had time left over, only then did they barely sow seeds and catch fish.
It was not only them.
Some spent all day diving for pearls.
Some spent the whole day grinding coral to make beads.
Some lived each day combing furs beautifully.
It was the first time such a thing had happened.
In Europe, this would be called “division of labor,” but to the Algonquins of this region, the current situation was so unfamiliar that they could not even find a word for it.
Of course, they still did not “buy and sell” goods like Europeans.
They merely continued to exchange gifts.
For more furs, they gave more potatoes and grapes; then, for even more furs, they gave even more potatoes and grapes in return to one another. No one was bound by any contract.
They were still free.
And yet, everything had changed.
There was no war, which had always been bound to break out when famine came.
Instead of bows, spears, and clubs, they took up thread, needles, and traps.
As a result... instead of battle, they obtained peace.
“And instead of death, they obtained life.”
“Please do not say that. Do we not now have to go deeper into the forest to obtain furs? And there, we end up quarreling with other tribes.”
“Hmm... That is true.”
“On top of that, mining gems has grown more and more difficult. Soon we will starve to death! We must leave this area!”
“...No. That is not so.”
The chief shook his head at his son’s worried words and said,
“I hear that the Great Chief’s tribe does not recklessly kill even large beasts, but instead places them in enclosures, tames them, increases their number, and eats them.”
“...What?”
“Could we not do the same? We can tame foxes and eat their meat. And while we are at it, obtain their pelts as well.”
In that way, they would use foxes as livestock.
To the son, who had only ever tamed small creatures, the proposal sounded absurd.
“We have never once done such a thing before, have we? To begin with, foxes eat meat, do they not? And whether foxes would even adapt and live well in a place we prepare for them...”
“We must try. Though we will surely meet only failure for several years.”
The chief’s eyes gleamed.
“Have things we have never experienced before not continued to happen? We must change as well. Or at least change our hunting methods.”
“But...”
“Have you ever before seen a being like the Great Chief? Why do you try to respond to a situation you do not understand in the way you already know?”
“···.”
“If it truly comes to it, you need only lead the tribe and leave for the Great Chief’s land. Remember this: a chief must make the decision that keeps his people alive above all else.”
“···.”
In his son’s eyes, unease could be seen.
They were the eyes of one who feared change.
But when the days grow short and the snow begins to fall, there is no tree that still bears leaves as fresh as summer.
When change approaches, all things must change to match it.
That is the way to survive.
Whatever his son might think of the Great Chief… for some reason, whenever the chief thought of the Great Chief whose face he had never even seen, his heart seemed to harden with resolve.
“Normally… by about this time, you would have died fighting.”
“Pardon?”
“And I would have starved to death.”
“···.”
“But look. Both of us are alive, enjoying the night. The campfire still burns, and the moon and stars burn in your eyes.
Do you not know to whom all of that is owed?”
No one goes hungry, and no one dies.
Even if not a single fox remained in this land, and every ruby from the surface mines disappeared, they would not starve to death.
Because the Great Chief he had heard of in rumors always welcomed new people.
Because he was one who would not let anyone who had entered his embrace die carelessly.
And so they would survive.
Thanks to a certain grape farmer whose face they had never even seen.
According to rumor, that grape farmer was a spirit descended from the heavens. That was why, having brought the treasures of the sky with him, he was so wealthy.
According to an even more unbelievable rumor, that grape farmer was a being who did not experience death.
To be honest, the chief did not believe even half of those rumors.
But no matter which among them were true and which were false.
Hundreds of thousands of lives owed a great debt to that grape farmer.
Originally, around this time, the population of this region would begin to be wiped out by smallpox.
The population of the Mississippi River basin to the south would die from epidemics carried over from the Spanish colonies; those who lived nearby would move north; and as abnormal weather caused many more to starve to death, the chaos in this region would deepen.
The Powhatan Confederacy, waging war against unfamiliar peoples who had come down from New York and Pennsylvania to the north to escape drought and famine, would begin to swell rapidly in size.
And after several more decades, various tribes would be defeated and ruined in wars against white people.
The same would be true of that seemingly enormous Powhatan Confederacy. Though they would appear to succeed in mediation under the famous name of Pocahontas, in the end they too would collapse beneath the invasion of white people, and many of the tribes under them would be forcibly relocated.
Defeat, massacre, forced relocation, extinction, ruin. The histories of the native tribes of this region that followed could be summarized that way.
And they would vanish from history as beings of no consequence. In the splendidly bound complete histories of America, they would be driven into a space of only a few pages. As if they had lost their homes and been driven out.
They had been driven out not only from space, but from time as well.
But now, it would not be so.
Because of the existence of one grape farmer.
This was a debt that could not be repaid with any number of gifts.
If this unprecedented drought continued.
The refugees heading for Nemo’s land would swell to hundreds of thousands in an instant.
That was why that grape farmer was called their Great Chief.