When I was in the sixth grade our school dreamed up a new way to save us from Russian missiles — a go-home air raid drill. We were sent home with instructions to hide in our basements all afternoon. My friends and I were like, “Yeah, right.” Instead, we biked straight out of town to our secret Indian village on the banks of the Cayadutta.

Those who never smelled the Cayadutta probably found the name noble sounding — in a Native American sort of way. But in our hometown, the stream that carried sewage, chemicals, flesh and hair from the tanning mills, only inspired insults. Kids who lived along the Cayadutta were sewer rats. One classmate was so slovenly he became known simply as Cayadutta. It was about the lowest name you could call anyone.

Flushed out by side streams, the Cayadutta flowed a bit more cleanly by the time it reached Sammonsville. It was near there that Malcolm had first spotted a high bluff above the stream and insisted that’s where he would live if he were an Indian. We all agreed he was right. We pictured a Cayadutta full of trout, deer in the forests, and gardens on the bluff providing corn, beans, and squash for our tribe.

On the afternoon of our go-home drill, we gathered firewood and built a teepee-style campfire at our secret spot. I produced a package of Oscar Mayer hot dogs I had hocked from my parents’ freezer and we roasted them on sticks. There was no bread, mustard, or ketchup – just water from our canvas-covered army canteens.

Malcolm washed down his second wiener with a big swig, and let loose a throaty belch, followed immediately by, “No Slugs! P.A.A.!”

“Slugs,” I shouted, too late. Malcolm had repelled my knuckle punch by calling No Slugs first.

“Eagle Claws,” Dondi countered, lunging for Malcolm’s belly with fingers flexed like talons.

“I called P.A.A.” Malcolm said, sidestepping and straight-arming Dondi’s attack.

“Yeah, what’s that supposed to mean?” Dondi asked.

“Protection Against Anything,” Malcolm said, sticking his chin out, challenging him.

“That’s brilliant,” said Woody, who was never all that much into this game anyway.

“What if I just call N.P.A.A.?” Dondi asked. He looked unsettled by Malcolm’s game-changer.

“N.P.A.A.?” Malcolm asked.

“NO Protection Against Anything,” Dondi said.

“It’s Protection Against Anything. That means anything.” For emphasis, Malcolm rolled up the sleeve of his favorite gold football jersey. He’d gotten it at the knitting mill and had cut off the sleeves at the elbow, right below the purple and white stripes. He showed us the bruises on his upper arm, and looked at Dondi accusingly, daring him to argue.

Dondi held up his hands in protest. I couldn’t tell if he was declaring his innocence — or surrendering.

“Hey, let’s find us some Arty-Facts,” Woody said, redirecting us back to the real purpose of our expedition.

The four of us scoured the village, picking up any sharp rock that might pass for an arrowhead. Larger pieces were spears and tomahawks. Flat, square-edged stones were fragments of pottery. Too soon, the length of our shadows on the ground told us it was time to head home.

After gathering our things and peeing on the fire, Malcolm proposed we become Indian blood brothers. Producing a drop of blood doesn’t sound like a big deal — until you try to do it with the point of a jackknife. Woody lit a match to sterilize the blade. Malcolm went first and carried on like a big baby, but it was only for show, to get the rest of us laughing while nervously waiting our turns.

I went last, with Dondi, Woody, and Malcolm chanting “Hurry! Hurry!” as they tried to keep their blood fresh, by squeezing more out of their fingers. Egged on, I sliced too deeply. With that, Dondi, who had the most theatrical flair, raised his finger up high, and said, “In the spirit of the Great Iroquois Nation, I hereby pronounce that we are now blood brothers of the Cayadutta Clan…bound to support and defend each other forever.”

No one could top that, so we looked each other in the eye and nodded our agreement. The smoke from the dying fire hung in the air, on our clothes and in our hair. Only I could reach Dondi’s bloody finger comfortably. Malcolm and Woody stood on their tiptoes and craned their bodies and necks upward, like baby birds reaching for food. Then we put our fingers together, and solemnly mixed our blood.

When you’re eleven years old, competing to collect the best Indian artifacts, it’s easy to get carried away. Each of us carried at least fifteen extra pounds in our knapsacks, and it was a five-mile bike ride back to town, even going the shorter way home on the highway.

After dinner that evening, I cleared all the books off my bedroom shelves, and neatly arranged displays of arrowheads, spearheads, tomahawk heads, and pottery pieces – just the way they did at Johnson Hall. I didn’t have any cool stuff like musket balls or scalps to display, but that didn’t stop me for weeks from charging five cents admission from neighborhood kids to see my collection. I would also take baseball cards in trade from those who didn’t have a nickel.

Returning home from school one day, I discovered my entire Indian arrowhead display replaced by a lame store-bought rock collection, with samples neatly labeled and glued inside a cardboard box. Eventually, Woody’s, Dondi’s, and Malcolm’s arrowheads met the same fate, tossed in the garbage, and all buried together in Johnstown’s landfill.

Many years after our discovery and plundering of the site, historians verified the location of an ancient Iroquois Village on the east bank of the Cayadutta, about a mile upstream from Sammonsville — at the exact spot where we became blood brothers. The public is now restricted from visiting this area for fear that the archeological purity will be violated.

No doubt, several hundred years in the future, when the remnants of our arrowhead collections are unearthed beneath tons of household garbage and tannery wastes, future historians will locate another Iroquois Village below the site of the old, 20^th century Johnstown Landfill.