Ekuni: Memories of the Okahok amai, 1676-1728 (Outlining and Additional Research Stage)
Ekuni returns to his story the next day finishing the tale of how he came to be in Nauvasa in Esaw territory. After joining up with the Tutelo led by Naqoq, they face the violence and confusion of Bacon’s Rebellion and the unsettling years bouncing between villages on the edge of English controlled Virginia and the Carolinas. By early 1700s, Ekuni’s family has settled in a small reservation called Fort Christanna in Virginia, but life was dangerous and the encampment quickly collapses forcing Ekuni south in the Carolina piedmont and eventually into Nauvasa. The travels are hard on Yanti and the growing families of their children. Slowly the family breaks apart moving to different nations and Yanti passes away leaving Ekuni alone amongst the Esaw.
The narrative takes us through the shattered Indian interior through the earliest reservation at Fort Christanna, through a series of massive Indian-Anglo wars and increasing disease, climactic instabilities, slave trading and land pressures. How this small band of Monytons navigates this warzone as refugees highlights the complexities of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century indigenous world.
