I was a happy child. My father was a naturalist who taught at the Yonkers Academy, and my mother an earnest Christian who often nursed the sick and helped the poor. David, my older brother, loved me dearly, and took no notice of my being a girl. He was my idol and model. Our parents cherished both of us and instilled us with their respective passions. We would as often accompany father into the field as mother on her charitable rounds.

In the spring of 1840 yellow jack came to Yonkers and my happiness abruptly ended. I had just turned 8. My mother tried to help the afflicted, but soon she, then my father, and finally David, took the disease. I worked hard under mother’s direction to aid them, but to no avail.

Reverend Myers found me alone, and delivered me to the Yonkers Christian Asylum for Orphans. There I spent the next eight years of my life. The Asylum was not a Dickensian workhouse. Almost fifty years had passed since it had sold a child to be apprenticed in the cotton mills. It was merely a woefully under-funded institution with an overworked staff. Mrs. Adele van Hoff was the superintendent. Miss Jane Wright taught us everything from arithmetic and geometry to history and poetry. Finally, Mr. John Smyth served as handyman and kept the boys in check – often with the cane. Together, they cared for forty-odd of us.

Most left the Asylum when they reached 14 – the boys apprenticed to a local tradesman, the girls married off or sent to a family in search of a cheap maid. I know not if the boys received any special tuition, but when a girl approached 14, Miss Wright took her aside and explained how to please men (and women) if that should be her fate. She had even instructed us in the use of sausage casings to avoid both the pox and being gotten with child. Of course, we held such instruction in strict confidence, as it was not part of the curriculum prescribed by the Board of Elders and enforced by Mrs. van Hoff.

While many of the girls looked forward to being taken my a man, I did not. So, I availed myself of an alternative. Some girls remained at the Asylum until 16 – bathing and feeding the infants, and changing their napkins. Margaret and I had chosen that course. We were neither fish nor fowl – neither staff nor inmates. We were paid a pittance – less than those who went into service. Our real recompense was Miss Wright’s tutelage in French and Latin. Our child care fit us to be nannies, but our languages opened the possibility of being governesses. We also had limited freedom.

Being slightly older than Margaret, I had my choice of service times and had chosen night duty – leaving her the day, for which she was quite grateful. My choice left me free to resume the explorations of my youth – venturing into the woods and glades to observe and enjoy the mysteries of nature. Father had often spoken of “the two books” – the Book of Revelation and the Book of Nature – which we must read with equal openness and reflection. I studied both with relish.

On one foray, picking my way along the steep bank of the Hudson, I chanced upon an isolated hut. Outside of it a woman was spreading herbs on a colorful blanket to dry. This was Agnes Cohan, a descendant of Tish-Co-Han, the famous Leni Lenape chief. I had never met an Indian before, so I was anxious to make her acquaintance. I approached, but watched in silence as she finished her task. Then she looked at me.

“Hello, I am Nancy Winston,” I said, extending my hand.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?”

“No, should I be?”

“No, but many are – that is why there are so few of us.”

“I am sorry to hear that. Is that why you live alone out here?”

“Partly, and partly to be one with nature.”

“Oh, I love being one with nature. My father used to take my brother and me out to be one with nature all the time.”

“Are they near?”

“No, sadly, both are dead. I am alone in the world.”

“Then we have two things in common – our love of nature and being alone in the world.”

“I suppose we do,” I said, with a sad smile.

“You know I am a witch?”

“Father said there are no witches.”

“I am not the kind of witch your people mean. Our witches are healers. Among the Leni Lenapi there are two kinds of healers. First, the nentpikes, who heal the body by the spirit in plants, animals and the earth itself. Second, the meteinu, called by some medew, who know these things, but also how deal with the manetu – the spirits that inhabit the earth. I am a meteinu. Your people call us witches, but we do not draw on the power of evil, the evil matantu – what you call Satan and his minions. Instead, we use the power of the dream world.

I reflected that Joseph also understood the dream world and had interpreted the Pharaoh’s dreams to the benefit of the Egyptians. So, such lore could not be evil. Indeed, father taught me all knowledge could be used for good. “My father often told me that Indians knew many things we did not and hoped one day to learn this wisdom.”

“Your father sounds like a wise man. Do you wish to learn as well?”

“Could I?”

“Yes. You are a little old to start, but I am also old and must pass my medicine on before I join the spirits of my people.”

“I would be honored if you would teach me,” I said earnestly.

“If you wish to learn my craft, I will teach you, but I cannot teach you this and that. You must become one of us. It will take many moons.”

“Well, I will be here two more years, God willing. Is that enough time?”

“It will have to be, will it not?”

The next day, I began my training by purifying my spirit in the pimewakan or sweat lodge. After fasting 24 hours, I striped to my drawers and entered a small pit covered with skins. In it were red hot rocks. Agnes poured water on the rocks until steam filled the pit. I left my body and had dreams that were not dreams. Suddenly, Agnes threw cold water on me, and I returned to my body. I told her what I had seen, and she told me what it meant as best she could. Much was left for me to figure out. Still, I understood my spirit as I never had before. Finally, she gave me a secret name. I would say more, but these things are sacred and can only be shared with another meteinu.

Agnes instructed me to rest the next day, so it was two days later when I resumed my training. She took me to learn how to gather black cohosh. Father had taught me this plant, Cimicifuga racemosa. He would gather its roots to help mother with her monthlies. Agnes taught me the meteinu way to gather it. I could see better than Agnes, so I was the first to spy one. She told me to go to it, but not to dig it up. Instead, I was to address its spirit, telling it that I was glad for it – glad that manetuwak, the Great Spirit, had created it – and that I must gather some of its kin to help cure my people. I was to bury a small sacrifice on its east side, then, leaving it untouched, gather what I needed from its brethren.

When we returned to her hut, I learned how to prepare and use the roots. As father knew, they could help women with their monthlies, but they could also reduce fever, help the old with joint pain, and make the bosom larger in both men and women. As I was small of bosom, she suggested that I make a salve for my chest and also drink a tea -- both prepared from the dried roots compounded with a powder extracted from the effluvium of a pregnant mare. This helped so much that Margaret, who was amply endowed, soon became envious. As I dared not risk the charge of witchcraft, I did not share my potion with her.

Agnes did not keep her herbs and potions in her hut, as it had been violated several times by town boys. Instead, she kept them in a cave opening onto a steep bluff overlooking the Hudson. The inside was commodious, and the entrance obscured by thorn bushes. It also had the advantage of being cool in the summer and warm in the depths of winter.

Over the next year, I learned to treat various pains, staunch bleeding, deal with snake bites and prevent sepsis. This was the lure of the nentpikes.

Shortly after I ended my 15th year, Agnes began instructing me in the spirit lore of the meteinu. I began this new training by returning to the sweat lodge, for to treat other spirits according to the will of manetuwak, one must first understand His will for your own. I emerged with a deeper understanding of, and renewed confidence in, myself.

The first spell was what I came to call “the fierce visage.” It begins by centering yourself, then projecting a vision of your power outward. Its purpose, like that of all meteinu spells, was not to harm others. Rather, the fierce visage lets enemies know who they were dealing with – making them think twice about doing you harm. I learned the fierce visage out of respect for Agnes, just as I had learned to address plants, not out of conviction of need – for I had no enemies.

Once I mastered the fierce visage, Agnes taught me about the dream world. The dream world was a different realm – always present, but hidden. There were many ways to help a person enter the dream world. Some used herbs, but the simplest is to relax a person until they hear your voice alone. To aid me, Agnes gave me a singular stone. It was like a moonstone, but run through with dark veins. If you held it one way, the veins suggested a face, another way some beast, or perhaps a mysterious symbol.
Margaret volunteered to let me practice on her. I always told her that she would feel wonderful just before I brought her back. So, she always did. She so liked it much that she often came to me after a hard day and begged me to relax her. As a result, I became quite proficient.

The lore of the dream world is not so much about getting there, as about what you do once you arrive. That is what Agnes spent the rest of my training teaching. In the dream world one could discover the reasons for special fears, or lay bare things a person had hidden even from themselves. I learned to make them to do things long after they awakened. All during my training, Agnes cautioned that the dream world was too solemn and sacred to be used for my benefit or amusement. Its use must always be for the benefit of others.

At the beginning of 1848, Agnes told me that her time was approaching. She would depart the first day of Spring for a secret place where she would go to the spirits of her ancestors. I was not to follow her. I might cry (and I did), but I was also to rejoice, for she would rejoin her family.

In the week before she left, Agnes revealed a last secret. She was a two spirit – a person with the spirit of both man and woman. She showed me her body – it reflected both her spirits.