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Episode Number: 6, according to broadcast order.
Hawkeye and Elizabeth see a well-dressed white couple with a baby fleeing towards Fort Bennington. The woman claims they have been chased by Hurons; the man says that there were no savages, and Hawkeye sees no one in pursuit, but from the forest a Huron warrior watches menacingly. Elizabeth takes them into her house, and learns they are Beatrice and Henry Richards, and the child is their niece, whose parents were victims of an earlier Huron raid. It is obvious to Elizabeth that Beatrice is, like her, Virginia gentry, but unlike Elizabeth, Beatrice is petty and vain, and cares more about the clothes that she left in the woods in their panic than the child. Elizabeth, who has been unable to conceive a child with William, longs to keep the infant, but knows she cannot do so without Williams’ consent.
While Hawkeye watches protectively, Henry Richards has McKinney and Peevey pick up Beatrice’s discarded clothing in the woods. They return to the fort, where Elizabeth admonishes the boys for their lack of knowledge of female fashions, fashions she knows has no place in her life at Fort Bennington. Seeing Hawkeye, she asks him why Beatrice does not appreciate having been given such a wonderful gift as her niece to care for, while she and William have remained childless. He reassures her that as the saying goes, “ he (the Almighty) has a plan.” As she is picking a licorice bush in the woods near Wolf Creek for leaves to relieve the child’s tooth-cutting, she is stalked by the Huron warrior, who follows her back to the fort. That evening, Elizabeth gives a dinner party for the Richards, Hawkeye and Taylor. She shows them a fan that Beatrice gave her in memory of her times back at Winchester Hills, her family estate in Virginia. Hawkeye is not impressed, saying that the fan reminds him of the mating dance of the turkey bird, then says goodnight. From outside the room, in derision, they hear the sound of a turkey gobble. The party continues, and while Beatrice sings, accompanied by Elizabeth on her pianoforte, the Huron warrior scales the fort’s walls and takes the child from its crib.
Hawkeye tracks him to his camp, and sees that the child being adopted by the warrior and his wife to replace their own child, killed by whites. Hawkeye returns to the fort and tells Henry and Beatrice that the child is safe, but that to retake the child would start a “mourning war” of revenge. Beatrice wants to abandon the child, but Elizabeth and Henry try to persuade Hawkeye to rescue the child. He refuses, and Henry, feeling responsible for his niece, goes out to rescue her. He is killed by the Hurons, and his body is left as a warning to the rest of the fort.
Hawkeye visits Elizabeth, feeling guilty that he did not do more to help Henry, and tries to reassure Elizabeth that the child will be raised by the Hurons with love and kindness, as he was by the Delaware. But she feels it is more important that the child be raised as a Christian, even if she is not loved by Beatrice. She goes alone to the Huron camp and takes the child from a lodge, but is captured by the women and children of the camp. That evening she is threatened by Scar, a young warrior who begins to molest her, but he is driven off by the women, who protect her. He snatches the fan Beatrice gave her, and watches her menacingly. The next day, Hawkeye and Chingachgook see Scar in the woods on a hunting party, and Hawkeye spots the fan in the warriors’ belt. He and Chingachgook capture him and learn that Elizabeth is being held captive in the Indian village.
Back in the Huron camp, Elizabeth notices that the women are treating the child with love, as Hawkeye has said, when she sees that a canoe has drifted ashore. Hawkeye is hiding in it, and she hears his turkey gobble. When the women go off gathering food, she grabs the child, races to the canoe, and she and Hawkeye escape. But she is startled and saddened to see the Huron woman Orittey standing on the shore, crying “Squananhaway,” keening for her loss a second time. Safe with Hawkeye, she talks with him about her failed attempt and he scolds her, but she defiantly tells him she was right. The child must be raised as a Christian, even if she is not cared for, so that when she dies she will go to heaven. Hawkeye says that her god must be smaller than his, because his god could find a child in a Huron village. He also points out that there is someone who cares for the child, and she is in the Huron camp. She reluctantly remembers how the Indian women fed the child by chewing food and placing it in its’ mouth, and tries to do the same when the infant is hungry.
Troubled, Elizabeth lies down next to the child to keep it warm as they can risk no fire, and realizes that if returned to Beatrice the child will not be loved, nor can she keep her as she wishes. Coming to a decision, she asks Hawkeye how he, who cannot read, can understand the scriptures so well. As Hawkeye watches protectively, she returns to the Huron camp. The warrior runs to attack them, but he is halted by Orittey, his wife. She and Elizabeth move closer, and Elizabeth tearfully hands the child to the warrior and his wife, after kissing it goodbye. Elizabeth and Hawkeye return to the fort, where she tells Beatrice that they failed in their rescue attempt.
Later, after Beatrice leaves, Elizabeth remembers what the Huron women called the child, and asks Hawkeye what the word “Squananhaway” means. He tells her it is Huron for ‘beloved.’ “Beloved…. That’s nice,” she says. The fan, a symbol of a life that no longer has any meaning for her, is given to Hawkeye, who hangs it on his on his medicine tree with other symbols of his memories.
Elizabeth writes in her diary “I told Hawkeye that I had no use for the fan, that something so delicate belongs at an afternoon tea, not out here. Of course, Beatrice said the same of me. And yet more and more, I feel as if my being here does have some purpose, that, as Hawkeye said, there is some greater plan.”
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