yeah i forgot to mention.
finished reading 'the ransom of mercy carter' by caroline b cooney. (what can i say? i finished all of her books. *grInz*:)
it was based on a true story. truely amazing, relatively interesting. it's about this girl called mercy carter who was living at the border of where the french and the english and fighting against each other. the red indians are the french's alies...and one day these red indians came to their village and salvaged their village. they're originally viewed as savages by all of the english.
after the salvage, the red indians killed some people, scalped some (scalping. ehz. using a knife to dig away the whole section of hair at the back of ur skull? with the skin and flesh and what nots. yeah. scalping. sounds horrendous. truely brutal), and marched 100 over children and adults for 400 miles all the way to france. or something similar.
anywayz, it comes to a turn when the mercy realised that the indians aren't too bad afterall, and that she grew to their ways, and respected them. the indian who found them at the village was surprisingly nice for a red indian...and he was kind to mercy all the way thoughout the march to france. he even gave mercy the indian name of monnonock which means lonely star. there was a nice meaning to why he called her lonely star. read it yourself.
throughout the story, mercy had to remind herself of her own identity, that she's a puritan (*cough*. setting. 1700s) and of her 'english' family. she had to grapple with the internal turmoil within herself when in a new place, whereby the people are catholic. and she's living on the grounds of her family's enemies. according to them, catholics are evil and will go to hell or something. ah wellz.
anywayz, she grew to respect them. it's quite touching the way the red indians came to accept her, even with the red indian who found her calling her 'daughter'. and in the end, she actually forgoed ransom. (ransom being the people in her original country paying for her return) and stayed as with the red indians. marrying one in the end.
yeah.
everything based on a true event.
caroline b cooney said in the last page
'i believe Mercy chose to stay in Kahnawake because of love'.
i think i agree with her.