Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (31 page)

“You believe all that?” Elise demanded.

“It is so. Reynaud has admitted it as the truth.”

“But you make it sound so much worse than it was!” She stared at the woman, hating the calm pronouncements she was making, her stomach knotted with apprehension.

“It is serious enough so that a test of his resolve, his loyalty toward his people is necessary.”

“First you say your people and now you say his. You ask too much of a man who is neither Natchez nor French, but of the blood of both. You are forcing him to choose and it isn’t fair!”

“He has already chosen or he would not be here.”

“Then why?”

“He must be certain in his heart, and we can be no less so. Lives, many lives, may depend on it.”

“It must be stopped! You could do it; you could go to the Great Sun. He could order it stopped.”

“He will not. The accusations have been made and must be answered. The elders have decided. My son, both my sons, know the old men are wise. It must be the gauntlet.”

Elise sent her a fierce glare. “Then if nothing can be done, why did you come to me? Why were you so anxious to tell me?”

“I wanted to see if you were a woman of feeling. I wanted to see if my son deserves the office he has been chosen to fill.”

“I don’t understand how—”

Tattooed Arm stopped her with an upraised hand. “My son is wise. I am satisfied.”

She was gone before Elise could form an answer. She started after the woman, her thoughts in turmoil. Had Reynaud known what he was to face when he had left the hut that morning? Had he guessed? She thought that he might have, and the remembrance of his light kiss, his swift but calm departure, brought the ache of pain to the region of her heart.

The gauntlet. It was as much a punishment as a test, one usually reserved for male prisoners, to inflict pain while discovering their levels of endurance. They could say what they pleased about loyalty and Reynaud’s liking for the French, but she saw clearly that he would be running the gauntlet because of Path Bear’s pride. The warrior had been incensed at being reprimanded because of a slave. He was not concerned for Reynaud’s fitness as war chief so much as for revenge. What would happen, as Reynaud ran the gauntlet, was that he would receive, many times over, the blows that had been meant for her.

Little Quail returned. Her manner was constrained as she spoke of the test that was to come. Elise had the feeling that she blamed her for it, though it might have been nothing more than her own guilt that made her think so. Feeling the need to speak of it, to exorcise some of her angry fear over what was to happen, Elise told the other woman what had happened on the trail and of her distrust of Path Bear.

The young Indian woman nodded when she had finished. “You may be right. Path Bear is not well liked. His mother was a Commoner, a Stinkard who married a Sun, Reynaud’s uncle. So strong-willed was she that she dominated her husband, though she was of inferior birth. Her husband tired of her and went away as an emissary to the Chickasaw, a mission that has taken several years. Some say he has another wife and children in that tribe and will not be coming back.”

“I see, but what has this to do with Path Bear?”

“I am coming to that; you must be patient,” Little Quail answered with a shake of her head. “With her husband gone from her influence, the mother of Path Bear, called Red Deer, pushed her Stinkard son to the front in the councils. With her behind him, he usurped the position of chief in the Flour Village, taking it as his right. He was confirmed in it by the council and the Great Sun because of his strength and ferocity in battle and because he has the blood of Suns in his veins. But there are those who say it was a mistake, for it was Path Bear, chief of Flour Village, who spoke loudest in the council against the French. It was he who urged the war of annihilation known as Blood Vengeance against them.”

“Then he is responsible for the massacre,” Elise said.

“It was he who put the idea into the head of the old war chief, yes. And once it was done, his power was great. He hoped to be chosen as the new war chief because of this and because Hawk-of-the-Night was far away. But the people, especially the women, had become wary of his bloodthirsty ways and so the elders sent to ask the brother of the Great Sun to accept the duty and the honor of becoming chief of war, in keeping with the ancient tradition.”

“Then Path Bear has more than one reason to resent Reynaud.”

Little Quail inclined her head in agreement. “But it goes deeper still. Even in childhood Path Bear tried always to surpass Hawk-of-the-Night, for being a Sun and the faster runner, the best shot with musket and bow and arrow, the most fortunate hunter, Hawk-of-the-Night was everything Path Bear most wanted to be.”

“If Reynaud should die …” Elise said softly, speaking her fear aloud.

“He will not die, but neither must he show doubt or pain.”

“When will it be held, this running of the gauntlet?”

“Tomorrow,” Little Quail said, pity in her voice as she watched Elise. “At dawn.”

By degrees, they began to regain their old footing. Elise asked the other woman to call her by her given name without the title of respect that had become a habit while Little Quail had been a slave to her house. Little Quail, in her kindness, offered to show Elise around the village to make her known to people and also to give her something to think about other than what would happen the next day. Together, they plaited Elise’s hair in a single long braid down her back in the manner of the Natchez women. After adjusting Elise’s cloak and retying her skirt for greater security, the young Indian woman led her out of the hut.

They strolled beneath the trees, skirting the foot of the mound of the Great Sun with the thirty-foot walls of his house towering above them. It was built like the others, with thick logs set upright in the earth and the corner logs left as trees that were bent toward the center and fastened together to form the roof. These logs were covered with woven cane mats that were then plastered with mud, while the roof was thatched with the covering mats. The house of the Great Sun was different only in that it was larger and had higher walls, with a second room that was used to store the excess corn and food stores, stores that would be parceled out during the winter to anyone in need.

Looking back to where the house given to Reynaud lay in the morning shadow of the mound of the Great Sun, Elise saw that, though not as large as the house of his brother, his home was larger than any other in the village. It was also newer. She realized abruptly that this was because it had been built especially for the new war chief on top of the ashes of the house of the old one. She had not thought of it until now, but there was little doubt that the bones of the last war chief lay beneath the floor she had walked on that morning.

She turned to Little Quail. “How long is it since the death of the old war chief in battle?”

“Not long. His bones were picked clean and buried only a few days before the delegation left the village to go to Hawk-of-the-Night.”

The woman’s voice was so quiet that Elise felt a quick remorse. Impulsively she said, “Forgive me. For a moment I forgot that this was also the time of your husband’s death. If I caused you pain by speaking of it, I am sorry.”

“You must not be. He is gone and I am not sad.”

It was true that she did not look the grieving widow, but the Indians did not believe in long periods of mourning. Three days were given over to intense outpourings of sorrow and then it was done. Life went on. “You miss him, I’m sure.”

“Perhaps,” the woman said with a Gallic shrug learned during her days with the French.

“You had no children.”

“No. I made certain of it.”

“You what?”

Little Quail sent her a surprised glance at the sharpness of her tone. “I chewed the leaves that rid my body of the flesh of his flesh, for I did not wish to bring it to fruit. Would you not have done the same?”

Thinking of Vincent Laffont, Elise said, “Possibly, if I could.”

“Surely you could have done so!”

“The leaves are not known among the French.”

The woman stopped, “But you have so much knowledge. Surely this, being so important to women, is known to you.”

“No.”

“How strange. What do you do?”

“There are ways, instruments, but it is dangerous. Usually we do nothing.”

Little Quail shook her head in amazement. “But you have no child of your husband.”

“He was incapable, I believe, or possibly I am.”

“It may be he was, for I had no need to chew the leaves while with him.”

It was a relief to hear her say it. Elise had sometimes wondered why she had never conceived in the early days. She had thought that perhaps her body itself had cast off her husband’s seed so greatly had she despised everything about him. Nature was not always so accommodating, however.

“In truth,” Little Quail went on, “the death of my husband saved me trouble. I was near to putting him from my house.”

Once more there was surprise in Elise’s eyes as she looked at her. “You could have done that?”

“Most certainly. Oh, I know that the house belongs to the man among the French, but it is otherwise with us. Here the house, the cooking pots and vessels, the furs and leatherwork, the land we plant all belong to the women. A man owns his weapons, the clothing he wears, and perhaps a horse if he has used furs to trade for it.”

“And you would have been allowed to put him out? There is no law that would compel you to let him return?”

“None. I alone decide.”

“But if you had had children, they would have gone with him?”

“My children? Would I not have been their mother, she who carried them under her heart, bore them in pain, and cared for them in their helpless days? Does a fawn follow its father? Does the small opossum cling to its father’s tail? Does the bear cub recognize the one who sired it? No! Why should they have gone with him?”

“He might have wished to know them, to help rear them.”

“Children are watched and reared by all. There would have been no hindrance.”

It was said that children of the Natchez were never struck and seldom spoken to in anger. They were welcome at every fire and in every hut and were taught with gentle words and demonstrations by whoever was near when a lesson was needed. As a result, they grew up confident, fearless, and certain within themselves. It would be interesting to see if it was true.

In the bright light of day, Elise was able to see more clearly than she had the night before that the village was built in a straggling circle. In the center was the mound of the Great Sun with his house facing south and with the open plaza, a large, flat area of beaten earth, in front and below it. There was a ball game, using a sphere of leather-wrapped moss, in progress on this meeting ground of the village at the moment, with much shouting and yelling among the adolescent boys and girls who played.

On the other side of the plaza, facing the mound of the Great Sun, was the temple mound. The temple itself was the most imposing building in the village, built of enormous logs in a large square, with an antechamber facing east to prevent the uninitiated from seeing inside. Outside the temple the eternal fire burned between posts that were carved at the top in the likenesses of eagles. The most curious feature, however, was the ridgepole of the temple, where the carved images of wild white swans in flight were attached.

Directly behind the mound of the Great Sun lay yet another mound. This was, according to Little Quail, the old temple mound, abandoned in some forgotten year because the waterway that ran swiftly alongside the village, called St. Catherine Creek by the French, had encroached upon it. There was a fairly open space in front of it that had been the plaza in the old days, but it was now covered with huts. The huts also spread to the edge of the creek and on one side of the plaza and for some distance on the other.

“Where do you live?” Elise asked Little Quail.

“My hut is over there, with the Honored People.”

The Honored People were those who had won advancement due to brave deeds or unselfish service. They were a special class ranked below the Sun and Nobles, but above the Commoners, or Stinkards.

Elise looked at the indicated round building with a conical roof. It was small but comfortable. A number of others were set close around it, with a space of tree-shaded earth between it and the larger huts nearer the mound of the Great Sun.

“And who lives there?” Elise asked, indicating the larger dwellings.

“The Nobles in the nearer huts and the Suns living closest to the Great Sun. The Commoners live over there, farthest from him. Perhaps I should tell you that my husband was a Commoner, or more accurately, a Stinkard.”

Her attention caught by Little Quail’s tone, Elise turned to look at her. “That makes a difference.”

“Yes, of course. It is forbidden to marry one’s own class. If I had been chosen by a Noble, I would have had to obey my husband and wait on his pleasure more closely. By marrying into the class under me, I kept my privileges and possessions.”

“I see. In either case, your children would have remained Honored People, following your station.”