63 pages • 2 hours read
Geraldine BrooksCaleb's Crossing
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaPart 1, Chapters 10-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Anno 1660 Aetatis Suae 15 Great Harbor”
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary
Bethia’s father spends many hours aiding Nahnoso. Bethia returns to the Merrys without him, and there she is left alone with Noah Merry. He expresses particular interest that she speaks the difficult Wompaontoaonk tongue—someone like her could help the Merrys’ relationship with their Indigenous neighbors. The implication here is that he has some expectation of her hand in marriage.
When Bethia’s father returns from his ordeal, he is excited about the possibility of converting a sonquem. Bethia secretly wonders what this might mean for Caleb.
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary
This chapter returns us to the day before Caleb arrived in Bethia’s household. Bethia’s father has sent Iacoomis to convert Nahnoso, but Iacoomis encounters Tequamuck and enters a stalemated confrontation with him. Bethia’s father follows, and Nahnoso rejects him (clearly influenced by Tequamuck).
Nahnoso becomes sick again soon after, this time with smallpox. Bethia remarks how the disease can ravage Indigenous populations. Her father goes to help Nahnoso and his tribe. Later, Bethia’s mother—still alive at this point—sends as much food as their supplies can spare. A report comes that Nahnoso’s son, Nanaakomin, Caleb’s brother, has died of the disease.
Bethia explains that many of the settlers speculate that God sent smallpox to free the Indigenous people from their benighted condition, since one result of the plague is that most of the people turn their backs on Tequamuck. Caleb seeks out Bethia’s father for further education and, of course, this worries Bethia because it could bring to light her sins against her family. At the chapter’s end, we learn that Caleb has been accepted for instruction alongside Iacoomis’s son, Joel. If the two Indigenous pupils succeed, they will go to Harvard to continue their studies.
Part 1, Chapters 10-11 Analysis Summary
Noah Merry’s interaction with Bethia reiterates the theme of her culture’s assumption of women’s dependence on and inferiority to men. Plans have been made behind her back regarding her future betrothal to Noah.
Smallpox is an important symbol because it shows how vulnerable the Indians are to certain aspects of the European settlement process. They have no defenses against this disease. It also provides an important reminder of European ignorance on many points. The Europeans at this early point have no idea that they are in fact the ones spreading the illness. Instead, they justify the epidemic as a God-sent sign to Native Americans to abandon their beliefs and instead convert to Christianity. For Bethia’s father, converting Caleb’s father would mark a major victory because it would provide him with much of an entire tribe at one strike.
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