Jubal Sackett (1985) (13 page)

The river turned north, and after a while we entered the Ohio, a much larger river. There was an Indian village near where the Tenasee entered the Ohio but we passed it at night. Dogs barked and a few Indians came from their lodges to look about. We were far out on the water and they saw us not. Some miles further we camped the night on a sandbar covered with willows, building a small fire for the smoke to keep the mosquitoes away, and at daybreak we were in the canoe once more. Ahead of us lay the Great River, which some Indians called the Mississippi.

My leg was now much better, and soon I would discard the crutch. Whenever possible I moved without it, trying to get the muscles working again.

Having no experience with broken limbs I had no idea when to get rid of the crutch.

The Mississippi, if such it was called, proved a different river. It wound and twisted through the land, carrying much debris, huge trees torn from its banks, once even a cut board, which puzzled us indeed. The other river for which we sought would be several days travel away to the south. How far I did not know.

Keokotah had been there, of course. He had waited there for me and had come looking only when he was sure something had gone wrong.

We camped on the Great River, on a sandy island partly made up of gigantic old trees that had drifted together, moored to the bottom by their own roots and branches. These were drifted trees from somewhere far upstream. Debris and mud had gathered about them, and an island had been created of several acres. Willows had grown up and some other larger stuff had started. No doubt the island would remain until some spring flood tore it loose and scattered its bits and pieces.

Our fire was going in a sheltered place behind great roots, and fish were broiling.

I said to Keokotah, "The Englishman? How did he come to be with you?"

Direct questions rarely brought a response. He shrugged, and stripped the backbone from a fish in his hands. "He good man." He glanced at me. "Talk, all the time talk."

"To whom?"

"To me. He talk to me. He say I am his brother." Keokotah chewed a moment. "He come in canoe. Like yours. He not a big man. Smaller than you, but strong."

After a few minutes of silence he added, "He cough, much cough. I think he sick. I say so."

The fire crackled, and I added sticks. "He say he not well and he say, 'You wrong. No sick. I die soon.'

"He look much at small packet." He shaped a rectangle with his fingers. "Many leaves sewn at the back. The leaves have small signs on them. He looks at them and sometimes he smiles or speaks from them. I ask what it is and he say this isbook and it speaks to him.

"I listen, no hear it speak."

"The signs in this book spoke to him," I said. "When you look at a trail in the morning, it speaks to you of who passed in the night. It was so with him."

"Ah? It could be so." He looked at me. "You have book?"

"At my home there were many books," I said, "and I miss them very much." I tapped my head. "Many books up here. Like you remember old trails, I remember books. Often I think of what the books have said to me."

"What do books say?"

"Many things, in many ways. You sit by the knees of your old men and hear their tales of warpath and hunt. In our books we have made signs that tell such stories, not only of our grandfathers but of their grandfathers.

"We put upon leaves the stories of our great men, and of wars, but the best books are those that repeat the wisdom of our grandfathers."

"The Englishman's book was like that?"

"I do not know what book he had, but you said he read from the book. Do you remember what he read?"

"What he reads sings. I think he has medicine songs, but he say, 'Only in a way.' He speaks of the 'snows of yesteryear.' "

"Frangois Villon," I said.

"What?"

"That line was written by a French poet, a long, long time ago."

"French? He say Frenchmans his enemy!"

"That was probably right," I said, "but that would not keep him from liking his poetry. Did you never sing the songs of another tribe?"

He started to say no and then shrugged. "We change them. Anyway, they were our songs once ... I think."

"My leg is better. Tomorrow I shall walk without a crutch."

"Better you walk," Keokotah said. "I think much trouble come. I think we have to fight soon."

We slept, and once I awakened in the night. Our fire was down to coals, and above us the stars had gone. The air smelled like rain and I thought of us alone in all that vast and almost empty land.

It was a lonely, eerie feeling. Alone ... all, all alone!

I drew my blanket around my shoulders and listened to the rustling of the river.

It was a long time before I was again asleep.

Chapter
Twelve.

Now I made ready my pistols. I did not wish to use them but the need might be great. My bow was ever beside me, an arrow ever ready.

Endlessly wound the river along its timbered banks, brushing the roots of leaning trees, heavy with foliage. Dead trees, uprooted far upstream, were a danger to birchbark canoes, and at no time dared we relax. Around each bend, and the twists and turns were many, might lie enemy Indians or some obstruction to rip our bottom out.

Yet there was beauty everywhere and we were lonely on the river. The forest was dark and deep with shadows where cypress trees were festooned with veils of Spanish moss. Water oak, hickory, tupelo gum, and many other trees clustered the banks, and hummingbirds danced above the water, opalescent feathers catching the light as if they played with their own beauty.

We startled a flock of ducks, and Keokotah killed one with an arrow. We lived on and off the river, catching fish, killing wood pigeons and geese. Often we saw bears, but they seemed more curious than aggressive. Ours was an easy life.

"No mans here," Keokotah suggested.

"Sometimes it is better so."

He threw me a quick glance over his shoulder, a glance of agreement. Perhaps that was why Keokotah traveled, to be alone with all this, or almost alone. How long would it remain so? Knowing the driving, acquisitive people from whom I came, I did not give it long. We were among the first and the most fortunate. A man might travel forever here, living easily off the country, untrammeled and free.

"The Englishman? You knew him long?"

He held a hand above the water. "I am no higher when he come. I am a man when he die."

This surprised me, for I had not realized he had been with them so long. This was a mystery. Why would an educated, intelligent man choose to live his life away from all he knew? And how had he come there in the first place?

"It is good to have a friend."

He made no reply, but after a few minutes he said, "It bad. No good for me."

"No good to have a friend? But that's--"

"I ver' small. He tell stories. I like stories. No stories of coyote. No stories of owl. Stories of men in iron who fight on horseback." He paused. "What is horse?"

Of course, he had never seen a horse. "It is an animal. Larger than an elk. It has no horns. Men ride them."

"Ride?"

"Sit astride of them and travel far."

"He has long tail? Two ears ... so?" He held up two fingers.

"That's it."

"I have seen him. Run ver' fast."

"You've seen ahorse? But that could not be, you--!" I stopped in time. There had been that other day when he spoke of what could only be an elephant, but with long hair. I had made him angry then. "Where did you see it?"

"Many." He gestured off to the south. "I kill young one. Eat him." He looked at me to see if I believed. "Only one toe. Ver' hard."

I'd be damned. I'd be very damned. Horses here? But then, the story had it that when De Soto died his men built boats and went down the river. What did they do with their horses? If they had turned them loose they might well have gone wild. And the Spanish were inclined to ride stallions, using mares or mules for pack animals.

Horses ... now wouldn't that be something! If we could catch and break a couple of horses--

If a man had something to ride, those plains in the Far Seeing Lands might not seem so vast.

Our canoe glided smoothly upon the waters of the Mississippi and as night came on we held closer to the western shores. Once we saw a thin smoke but kept well into the stream, for we would find no friends here. At night we camped on a muddy point and killed a water moccasin as we landed. It was a big snake.

Keokotah puzzled me. That the Kickapoo were wanderers we had learned from the Cherokees, but I sensed something else in him. Had his boyhood teacher been too good? Had the lonely Englishman taught his pupil too well? Had the Englishman's teaching created a misfit, as I was?

The thought came unbidden, unwanted, unexpected. Yet was I not a misfit, too? Had not Sakim's teaching given me ideas I might never have had?

Kin-Ring and Yance were better fitted for survival in the New World than I. Yance perhaps best of all, for he asked no questions. He accepted what he found and dealt with it in the best way he could. He lived with his world and had no thought of changing it. If a tree got in the way of his plowing he cut it down. If an Indian tried to kill him, he killed the Indian and went on about his business. Kin-Ring was much the same, although Kin was a planner, a looker-ahead.

Sakim had been a philosopher and a scientist in his own way, and like those of his time and country his interests had extended into all things. He had questions to ask and answers to seek. He had learning to do, as I had.

Keokotah had a restless mind. The Englishman had aroused something in him that took him away from his people. I began to see that his thinking was no longer theirs.

We were strange ones, Keokotah and I, but the result was less for me than for him. The Indian peoples I had known belonged to clans, and the clans demanded that each member conform. The Indian seemed to have lived much as he had for hundreds of years, and now here and there an Englishman, a Scotsman, a Frenchman was coming among them with disturbing new weapons, new ideas. Keokotah was a victim of change. His Englishman had dropped a pebble into the pool of his thinking, and who knew where the ripples would end?

"Big village soon." Keokotah pointed ahead of us. "Quapaw." He swept a hand to include the country we were in and where we had come from. "Osage. Ver' tall mans." His hands measured a distance of a foot or more. "Taller than me."

Six and a half or seven feet tall? It was a lot. By signs he indicated they were slightly stooped and had narrow shoulders.

"No good for us. Kickapoo fight him."

The village was on the eastern shore so we hugged the western, watching for the mouth of the Arkansas River, which would soon appear. It flowed into the Mississippi from the northwest and despite its flow of water could be easily missed because of the bayous and convolutions of the Mississippi.

According to Keokotah the Quapaw were allied to or a part of the Osage people, but were inclined to be more friendly than the Osage, who were very jealous of their lands along the river.

At dusk we killed a deer.

Night came suddenly to the river. The shadows under the trees merged and became one, the day sounds ended and the night sounds began, tentatively at first. Bullfrogs spoke loudly in the night, and some large thing splashed in the water. "Alligator," Keokotah said, "a big one."

Alligators here? It could be. We often saw them in Carolina, and Yance had seen many when he went south to trade with the Spanish for horses.

The thought of our flimsy canoe with alligators about was not a pleasant one.

He made a motion for silence and began dipping his paddle with great care. The canoe glided through the dark, glistening water. There was a smell of rotting wood and vegetation from the shore. Once, on a fallen tree lying in the water we passed only the length of a paddle from a huge bear. He was as startled as we, but we slid past in the dark water and he gave only a surprised grunt.

It was very still but for the sounds from the forest and the soft rustle of water. In the distance and across the river we heard the beat of drums and occasionally a shrill yell. Then a large island came between us and the village.

"Soon," Keokotah whispered.

Several long minutes passed. Peering into the darkness of the western shore I saw nothing but a wall of blackness where the trees were. The air was damp and still. The current was strong.

We felt the movement of water before we saw it. There was a push against the right side of the canoe, thrusting us toward the middle of the stream.

"Now," Keokotah said. "It is here!"

He turned the bow into the now strong current from our right and then he dug in, paddling with strength. No longer drifting with a current, now we were breasting one, and a strong one at that.

It was a rich and lovely country and there was beauty where the river ran. Once a canoe with four warriors tried to overtake us, but their clumsy dugout canoe was no match for our lighter craft and we drew steadily away from them until finally they gave up.