Chesapeake by James A. Michener

birds destroyed.
    It was at the end of winter when the sad night came. Navitan had beenscraping the reef for oysters when she saw a flock of geese in a cornfield acting strangely. The males were running at one another, and the yearlings were restless, gathering twigs as if to build nests they knew they did not need. Uneasy chatter murmured through the flock, when suddenly an old gander, much heavier than the rest, ran awkwardly a few steps, flapped his great wings and soared into the air.
    In an instant that whole field of geese flew aloft, circled a few times, then set out resolutely for the north. From other fields which Navitan could not see, other flocks rose into the air, and soon the sky was dark with great black-and-gray geese flying north. ‘Oh!’ she cried, alerting the village. ‘They’re leaving!’
    No one required to be told who was leaving. The geese, those notable birds on whom the tribe had feasted for generation after generation, were quitting the river. In nine days there would not be a goose visible anywhere, and to see them flying north, to hear them honking as they repaired to the distant ice-bound fields on which they would raise their young, was a moment of such sadness that many of the older men and women wept, for the great geese had been their calendars and the counting of their years.
    Now the werowance appeared, white and stiff-legged, with his face to the sky, and after he had cast his blessing on the geese, the shaman uttered the timeless prayer:
    ‘Great Power, You who watch over us and establish the seasons, guard the geese as they leave us. Watch over them as they fly to distant areas. Find them grain for their long flight and keep them from storms. They are our need, our protection from hunger, our sentinels at night, our companions through the winter, our source of food and warmth, our tenants on the land, our watchmen in the sky, the guardians of our streams, the chatterers at the coming and going. Great Power, protect them while they are gone from us, and in due season bring them back to this river, which is their home and ours.’
     
    No child made a sound, for this was the most sacred moment of the year. If the mysteries were not properly cast, the geese might fail to return, and the winter when that occurred would be terrible indeed.
    Some moons after the geese had gone, crabs moved in to take their place as the principal source of food, and now Pentaquod discovered what the villagers meant when they claimed that Manitou, the Great Power, looked after them especially. It was a day in late spring when Navitan led him to her canoe, handing him a basketful of fish heads and beargristle to tote along. The concoction smelled offensive, but Navitan assured him this was what the crabs preferred, and he wondered how the loose and almost rotting stuff could be attached to the curved hooks used in fishing.
    To his surprise, his wife had no hooks. ‘What kind of fishing is this?’ he asked, and she smiled without offering an explanation. But once he had paddled her to the spot she had selected, she produced long strands of twisted fiber and deer gut, and to these she tied fish heads and chunks of gristly bear meat, throwing the lines aft.
    Pentaquod looked for the telltale signs which indicated that a fish had bitten the lure, but there was no such movement and he concluded that Navitan was not going to catch any crabs, but after a while, when there was no visible reason for her doing so, she began to pull in one of her lines with her left hand, holding in her right a long pole to which was attached a loosely woven wicker basket. As the line slowly left the water, Pentaquod saw that the first fish head was about to appear, but what he did not see was that attached to it was a crab, cutting at the meat with his powerful claws and oblivious of the fact that it was being pulled almost out of the water.
    When the crab was visible to Navitan, she deftly swept her basket into the water and under