The woods were stirring with birdsong and the chirring of crickets, and far off could be heard the barking of a wolf as a lone figure ran easily along the narrow game trail. From his home among the Mohauk in the Iroquoi Long House, he had been travelling for more than a month, and had now reached the lowlands of the far south bordering the lands of the Seminole people. From here, trouble always seems to come...he thought. Must be from the heat of the sun!

Originally, he had come from the land of the Abenaki as a child...but he did not look like the other people in his village, or any other he had been through in his twenty five years. A sickness had taken the rest of his family, and he had wandered for days until a Mohauk woman, Ahianhwatha had taken him in as a son. She had named him with a fine Mohauk name, but he preferred to use the one given by his friends...'Green Eyes'. It was this name he gave to strangers...and the one he would give to the Seminoles when he met them...and the one he would use in speaking to the Pale Ones if the stories filtering north were to prove true.

At a small village on the edge of Seminole lands, he traded for some local clothing, the better to deal with this climate. The loose-fitting tunic reached to his knees, and was banded with embroidery of geometric patterns. Moccasins of dyed leather covered his feet, as well as leggings of scarlet, a scarf wrapped his head, and another was tied from shoulder to hip, displaying symbols denoting his status as an envoy.

In a few days he should reach the town closest to the newcomers, and from there he would begin the real purpose of his journey...to find out the intentions of these men, their numbers and their strengths and weaknesses....

That night, by his small fire, he ate his dinner of rabbit and pemmikan, and was soon watching the stars wheel overhead...slightly different from those over his home...and drifted off to sleep. He found himself drifting over the land faster than an eagle, drawn north by some invisible thread to the town of Onondaga, where sat the great council under the Tree of Peace. He saw a grey-haired man--Handsome Lake--as he set out his latest vision to the assembled sachems of the Iroquois Long House. It was at his behest that Holati Itusua found himself in the Seminole country, far from his home in Akwesasne.

Handsome Lake's vision had been this: the villages of the Iroquois from the Keepers of the Eastern Door to those of the Western Door lay empty, their hearth-fires cold and scattered. The same was to be found in many lands fronting the Great Water, yet he could see no cause--the only signs of life coming from the South--and thus the matrons of the Ongwanosionni had chosen him to seek out the source of this catastrophe.

The young man stirred uneasily in his sleep, crying out in the language he barely remembered from his earliest days...a language not understood by either his Abenaki or Mohauk kin. Visions of a shadowy figure caused him to cry out again...a figure very tall with sun-gold hair and booming voice..."Vati! Vati!"