Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (35 page)

“They needn’t make it so obvious! What if Reynaud heard them?”

The Indian woman shook her head. “He would understand their fears.”

“But I thought Indians were stoical about such things? That they hardly grieved at a death.”

The woman gave her a strange look. “It is useful to grieve aloud before death so that the one who must depart will know he is loved, don’t you think? And Hawk-of-the-Night, now Tattooed Serpent, is much loved. Besides, he is a Sun and the great war chief.”

“You have a point, but as for the other, what difference — Oh! I see.”

As a high-ranking Sun, if Reynaud died there would be many who would be chosen to die with him, to go with him and serve him in the hereafter. There would be more ceremonial stranglings before the temple. Since he had been raised to the position of war chief, there would presumably be many more to honor his newly acquired rank. If she were his wife, even she—But, no, she would not consider it.

“There is another thing. Four years ago, when the old Tattooed Serpent, the man who was war chief before the last one, died, there was much terror because he, too, had been the brother of the Great Sun. So strong was the love of the brothers, one for the other, that our supreme ruler had sworn a blood oath that he would follow Tattooed Serpent in death. This would have meant many more ritual deaths, to number perhaps a hundred. It was prevented by a Frenchman who sat with the Great Sun through the night following the death. In the end, of course, the Great Sun met death, anyway; of grief, some say, and the dishonor of breaking his word. Now the people fear that because of the birth tie between the man who is now the Great Sun and Hawk-of-the-Night, the new Tattooed Serpent, he, too, may decide to destroy himself.”

“Surely not?”

“Who can say? It isn’t often that two who come from the same womb are suffered to live. One is usually destroyed, as with all others that are malformed. It was the French father who saved the second-born, claiming that there was one child for the Natchez and one for his people. Still, it is this tie that causes the greatest fear now.”

Elise stared at the other woman, absorbing what had been said without surprise, rather as if she had lost the capability of feeling such a thing. Finally she said in firm tones, “No matter. Reynaud is not going to die.”

“If only it could be certain,” Little Quail said, her face anxious as she came to stand and look down at Reynaud where he tossed restlessly on the bench.

“I will make it certain. I won’t let Path Bear win.”

“What do you mean?”

Little Quail had been in and out of the house all day bringing whatever was needed, helping to turn Reynaud and to restrain him, seeing to Small Owl. Without the necessity of spoken words, the two women had put aside their differences. In many ways, they had regained the closeness that had existed between them when they had been united against the petty tyranny of Vincent Laffont.

Now Elise said, “Did I not tell you? I thought I had spoken of it; it’s been so strong in my mind. It was like this.”

The face of Little Quail was grim when Elise had finished. She swung away, calling to Tattooed Arm to listen to the tale. The other women gathered near, exclaiming, looking from one to the other as the Indian woman told of Path Bear’s vicious trick.

Tattooed Arm was silent for long moments when Little Quail fell silent. Her face was grim, etched in sorrow and implacability. She turned at last to the oldest woman among them. “Grandmother,” she said, giving the ancient one the honorary title, “what say you?”

It was some time before the toothless woman spoke, but no one was impatient, no one hurried her. Finally, her ancient features drawn with grief, the woman looked up from her contemplation of the floor. “Path Bear has shown himself unworthy,” she said. “Let it be banishment.”

The others nodded in slow agreement. From one to the other the single word ran, a sentence, a curse.
“Banishment. Banishment. Banishment.”

It did not sound like a harsh decree. The banishment, according to Little Quail, was only from the Grand Village, not from the tribe itself. Path Bear would still hold his office as chief of the Flour Village, still take part in the feasts and dances and be allowed to fight as a warrior. But the decree meant the end of his ambitions, for it was at Grand Village that the council of elders met to plan for the planting and the harvest, for the hunting and the wars. It was there that the Great Sun held his court and dispensed honors and favors. Path Bear was condemned to stay as he was, a small chieftain who could never again influence the decisions that meant famine or prosperity, life or death, in the tribe. He was finished.

The wives of the Great Sun looked at each other, then the youngest slipped from the house. The voices outside increased in volume, with a sharp note of outrage rising above them now and then.

Time passed as Elise and the others worked on Reynaud. It was perhaps an hour later when a hail came. Since the request for entry had been made in a female voice, the eldest wife of the Great Sun called out to bid the woman inside. The door slid open and a woman stepped into the house.

It was the mother of Path Bear, the woman known as Red Deer, who had attacked Elise. A massive woman, her heavy features hinted at mixed blood, perhaps of Natchez and Tioux. She had come to plead for her son before Tattooed Ann and the Great Sun.

The Great Sun was at the temple and Tattooed Arm refused to go with Red Deer to him or to send him a message to let him know that the other woman was there. She heard Path Bear’s mother out in silence, never turning from her though the woman gestured wildly in the direction of Elise and Reynaud, lying on the bench. Finally Red Deer ran dry of words. Tattooed Ann raised her arm and began to speak, the phrases smooth and eloquent as they fell from her lips.

Elise could not understand what she was saying, but the import was obvious. There would be no repeal of the sentence. When she ceased to speak, the mother of Path Bear turned away. Her bearing was erect and there was venom in the look she cast at Elise, but on her face were stamped the lines of defeat and broken grief.

The judgment of Path Bear had been quick and without formality, but it was no less effective for all that. There was no one who would carry out the sentence, no armed men who would escort Path Bear from the village, but if he did not go he would be treated as one dead. No one would speak to him or acknowledge his presence. His friends would look through him as if he did not exist. The women in particular would ignore him, speaking of him in his hearing as a worthless one whose absence made life better. Few could tolerate such ostracism for long. Often suicide was the result of so great a disgrace. Sometimes, rather than try to live under such a decree, the person faded away into the woods. Of these, some joined other tribes; most were never heard from again.

The night passed with little change. Elise searched her mind for some other concoction, some other method of treatment they had not yet used. She had heard of pouring brandy into the wounds and then lighting it to cauterize them, but she could not bring herself to believe that the added shock and pain would not override any benefit. Some people swore that pieces of bread tied to the injury and left to moulder away into crumbs were helpful, but she had no wheat bread to use. There were powders used by surgeons aboard naval vessels that were much touted by the surgeons themselves, but Elise had grave doubts that they were any more efficacious than the herbs that had already been applied.

Toward dawn, Tattooed Arm rose and, ordering Elise to bed, took her place. As much as Elise would have liked to refuse, she could not summon the effort. She was weary unto death, tired out with the worry as much as the physical exertion of caring for Reynaud through the long hours since his fever had started.

She was awakened when the sun was high by shouts and cries coming up from the village plaza. Thinking it was only some kind of game, she did not look out, but struggled up and righted her clothing, then went to check on Reynaud. Finding him much the same with Little Quail now on guard, she moved with stiff steps to wash her face with warm water from a clay pot. She stopped long enough to rescue a puppy from Small Owl, who was dragging it around by its tail, though she knew with wry certainty that the poor little animal would probably wind up in a cooking pot soon enough.

She sat down and took the laughing child into her lap, washing his face while she scrubbed her own, playing with him, enjoying his chortling and his attempts to talk as a relief from her own distress. She felt no self-consciousness about her actions; it was something she saw everyone in the house do a half- dozen times a day, this gentle caressing of the baby boy. He was constantly underfoot, into everything, and had to be continuously moved out of the way, out of the supplies, out of danger of the fire. He was never shouted at, never slapped, but was always given some toy or utensil or bit of food to distract him. By the same token he was never allowed to disturb Reynaud or his father or to impede the progress of the tasks that were being done.

Behind her, Little Quail spoke quietly to Tattooed Arm, then came to Elise’s side. They were both in need of the freshness of bathing, she said. Would Elise care to come with her to the creek?

A short time later as they made their way across the plaza toward the creek, a woman stopped them. A scouting party had come across a French expedition that had been reconnoitering to the south. They had killed five of the French and captured two others, one of whom had been tortured on the spot. The other man had been brought to the Grand Village. She did not know his name, but he was said to be a trader. The woman thought it a good thing that the warriors should have something to shout and dance about to take their minds from the worry about what the French might be planning and about the matter of Path Bear.

There was nothing Elise could do for the captured man. With an effort, she tried to close her mind to what was going to take place. She and Little Quail did not tarry long with the woman, but continued toward the water. Elise was silent as they walked, wondering who the Frenchman might be, if it was someone she knew or if it was simply a man who had been doing his duty as a soldier. The Indians, she had discovered, had little respect for the regular French army, considering the men as little better in battle than the greenest of young warriors. They reserved their admiration for the militia, the colonist volunteers who had learned to fight in the Indian fashion, shooting from cover instead of marching in battle formation to their deaths.

On the banks of the running stream, they untied the squares of cloth and leather that covered them and struck out into the water. Its chill brought yelps and gasps from them, but after a moment that cold freshness gave them the vigor to stage a water fight and that activity soon warmed their blood.

Downstream some distance from where they had entered the water was another woman who had just given birth that day. She was washing her newborn infant as well as herself. Elise had heard it said that this practice contributed to the high infant mortality among the Indians but that the women could not be persuaded to discontinue a habit that was of such long standing, considering cleanliness more important. In the same way, the children who ran high fevers with the white man’s diseases of measles and colds also came to bathe, bringing on the pneumonia that often led to death. It was true that the survivors of the rigors of daily bathing were strong and healthy—so rare was it to see an Indian who was crippled or disfigured, other than with battle scars, that it was not unusual for Indian youths who first saw the scars of chickenpox or smallpox on them to do away with themselves out of horror.

There were no men in evidence. They bathed at a different place, Little Quail said. It was not that their mutual nakedness was an embarrassment; no, not at all. Boys and girls up to the age of puberty swam and bathed together as a matter of course. It was simply that it was deemed more likely that there would be less time wasted, time that should be applied to tasks, if dalliance between the sexes during the ritual of bathing was controlled. Elise, remembering a certain night some weeks before, found the argument reasonable.

Her step as well as her spirits were lighter when they started back toward the house on the mound. She and Little Quail were chattering, sharing a comb of carved wood as they walked. She looked up as they crossed the plaza, noticing a group of men to one side where a pair of posts stood, set into the ground with another across the top of the first two rather like a gateway. Her mind registered what they were doing and she looked away sharply, falling silent. An instant later, she came to an abrupt halt. She whirled around.

The Indian men were tying a Frenchman to the upright posts, making ready to torture him. He was naked, spread-eagled between the posts with his wrists being fastened at the two top corners and his ankles at the bottom ones. His head hung forward on his chest. His soft hair shone golden blond in the morning sunlight, lifting lightly in the breeze. There were marks of blows on the white skin of his body and traces of blood where his bonds had cut into him. One warrior stepped up behind him, prodding him with the tip of his knife. He made not a sound, but his head came up and he stared across the beaten ground of the plaza at Elise.

“It’s Pierre!” she said, her voice breathless with disbelief.

“So it is,” Little Quail agreed indifferently. “For a Frenchman once of the Natchez, he has been very stupid. He should never have returned.”

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