Panther in the Sky (12 page)

Tecumseh’s body was trembling like that of a frightened rabbit, but his heart was growing huge inside him as he heard all this about his father in battle. Chiksika said now:

“He gave me promises to keep and to give to you. You must never forget these promises, even if I die in a battle. He said we must always protect our family and bring honor to it. That we must try to teach our little brothers the same. Are you remembering?”

Tecumseh nodded, his throat swollen. He always remembered what Chiksika taught him. Now Chiksika said:

“He told me to help you earn your
pa-waw-ka
when you are
ready. He told me not to let you forget the burden you are marked to carry, and that we are never to sign treaties with the white men.”

They were silent for a moment. They could hear the gurgling river nearby.

“Those are many promises,” Tecumseh then said in a little voice. “They will be hard to keep.”

“Very hard to keep. The worst times for our People are coming. For the Long Knives are braver enemies than we thought.” Chiksika breathed deeply, wincing with the pain of a hurt rib. He said, “But our father once taught me, a brave enemy is a great gift. He said I will understand that someday. Maybe I am beginning to understand that already.”

“I,” said Tecumseh, shivering, “do not understand that yet. Maybe I am not old enough.”

“They are a strong enemy, but we are stronger because we are right. As for me, I am going to kill white men until our father’s death no longer hurts my heart.”

B
LACK
F
ISH WALKED OUT TO THE EDGE OF TOWN TO MEET
Hard Striker’s family when they arrived at Chillicothe, and Chiksika, seeing him come forth, remembered a day almost seven years ago when the family had come here, and Black Fish had honored them then, too, by coming out to greet them like this. Then it had been a day of sunshine, and there had been a new life in the family, the baby Tecumseh; now the sun was hidden by gray clouds, and the family came mourning for a life lost. Turtle Mother’s tangled hair hid her face.

Black Fish was known as a demanding teacher of youth, but he was also the principal peace chief of the Shawnee nation and was famous for his warm and generous heart. Though his broad, bony face did not soften with a smile as he came forward with outstretched hand, his eyes glittered and he seemed to radiate a pulling power. When Chiksika stood with him and held his hand, he felt warmed and strengthened, as he had used to feel in the presence of his father. Black Fish’s lips were thin like a gash in leather, but from this hard-looking mouth came a soft greeting.

“My heart and my village are open to embrace the family of our great and brave war chief, whose last day brought honor to the warrior sept of our nation. You will share everything we have. Your mother and sister we surround with love and protection, and everything I know I shall teach to your little brothers. Come,
let me welcome your mother, and let me see again the sons she bore under the great signs.”

V
ERY SOON AFTER THE FAMILY ARRIVED IN
C
HILLICOTHE
, scouts began bringing bad news to the town.

The two armies of the Long Knives, one having crossed the Beautiful River from the battleground and the other having come down from Fort Pitt in boats, were closing together near the Shawnee towns down on the Scioto-se-pe. The thousands of soldiers were close enough now to threaten Cornstalk’s Town and Tall Soldier Woman’s Town and Black Snake’s Town. They had penetrated into the heart of the Shawnee country, and now they could easily march up and destroy all those towns and their crops, as they had done to the Wapatomica towns of the Shawnees during the summer. Such destruction would leave virtually all of the Shawnee nation to face winter without food or shelter. The only choices were a plea for peace and mercy or the most enormous and terrible sort of battle on the plains, close enough to the towns that the women and children and old people would be in danger. Cornstalk called a full council.

Chiksika sat as a warrior in council for his first time. Cornstalk faced the chiefs and warriors and asked them whether they wished to fight again. Chiksika and Black Snake and Black Fish and a few others stood up. But most said it would be better to sue for peace. With a terrible darkness in his face, Cornstalk threw his hatchet down so hard that its blade was buried. “Why did you not choose for peace when I advised it, before the battle?” he cried. “Now we have lost our war chief and many of our sons for nothing. The white men’s god was very strong and did not let us stop them. And so now we must go on our bellies like snakes and ask this white governor to have pity on us and spare our women and children, and now he will feel even stronger. But, yes,” he finished in a sad voice, “now we will crawl to him and ask for mercy. And what will this mercy cost us? I know not what his terms will be, but I expect that there will be more whitefaces than ever feeling bold enough to come into our country!”

Cornstalk was right. The white men’s treaty demanded the right to go down and build houses and towns in the sacred hunting ground, Kain-tuck-ee, on the other side of the Beautiful River. Cornstalk had to give his word that he would never raise the hatchet again against the whites. The chiefs who signed had to promise that they would not allow their young warriors to molest the white people who came down to Kain-tuck-ee to settle.
“Hear my prophecy,” Black Fish said after the treaty, which he had refused to sign. “They say the river will be the boundary. The white men will demand that we stay on our side, but they will not stay on theirs. They will come across the river into our country and steal our horses and shoot our game, and they will shoot us when we go there to hunt. It will be bad.”

S
TAR
W
ATCHER HAD MANY FRIENDS IN
C
HILLICOTHE AND
was glad to see them. But some of these girls were growing up to be not so pretty as she, and they seemed to resent it that this young woman of marriageable age had come to live in their town, bringing such beauty that she turned the heads of many young warriors from them toward her. Some of those girls began to treat her as if they did not like her, and she did not understand it.

But her mother, who at that age had been the most beautiful girl of her own town, could see what was happening, even though she was still in her mourning time.

“They will worry about you until they get married, my daughter,” she said. “Or until
you
get married.”

Star Watcher looked down at her hands and sighed. The only person she had ever thought of marrying, Stands Firm, now lived miles away, in their old home. Then she looked up with a wistful smile.

“But I already have a family to take care of,” she said.

“Listen to Loud Noise,” Turtle Mother said.

The runt of the triplets was jabbering in his bed. He who had cried so much in his first days did not cry much more than an ordinary child now, but he talked all the time he was awake, even though he knew hardly any words yet. But sometimes Star Watcher and her little brothers thought they could almost understand what he was trying to say. They thought that they had heard the words before.

Finally one evening Turtle Mother tried to explain it to them. She was still in the same torn and dirty clothes of mourning, and her hair was still loose around her face as she worked, and she still never smiled, but she cut and carried firewood, kept a cookfire going, ground corn, repaired the house, made clothing and moccasins for her children, and took care of them when they were sick or hurt, just as she always had, with the help of Star Watcher. And though she did not laugh or sing as she had used to, she still taught them.

“The tongue your little brother is speaking,” she explained, “is the secret language of Kokomthena, Our Grandmother who created
us. Our Grandmother speaks Shawnee tongue, and all other tongues, but also she has her own language, which children can understand until they are four summers of age. Then when they learn to speak Shawnee tongue, they forget Our Grandmother’s tongue. But sometimes when we hear a child talking, we think we remember some of the words. When Loud Noise becomes four, very soon now, this winter, then he will forget how he talked this way.”

“Ah,” exclaimed Tecumseh, squeezing his hands together and looking at his mother with widened eyes, “Tell us stories of Our Grandmother. How she made Kispoko warriors. Tell about Rounded-Side, and about Our Grandmother’s Silly Boys!” Tecumseh yearned to hear the old stories that told where the People had come from. He had been hearing Black Fish talk so many times lately about the frightful coming of the Long Knives, and of their lies and broken treaties, and of the way they made trouble and brought disease and death, that everything seemed to be under a dark cloud, and he longed to hear again the old sure stories that made his head fill up with bright sky and limitless waters, and giants and round men, and clay people, and great serpents with horns, and the Great Turtle with the world on his back, those stories that made him think that the People had once enjoyed happier and more magical times and perhaps might again someday.

Tecumseh knew the magic was still alive, though perhaps asleep or gone away to hide in these times. The shamans, in fact, had sacred bundles in which were kept, among other great medicines, feathers of the Thunderbirds and a bit of the flesh of the King of the Great Horned Snakes. Women in the time of their moon were not allowed to pass within sight of where the bundles were kept.

The bundle owned by the Chalagawtha Shawnees was stored in a small house next to the shaman’s lodge, and sometimes it hung from a tall pole near Black Fish’s lodge, and the ground around the pole was always kept swept. Tecumseh had stood looking at the bundle often, and in looking at it he had felt a power coming from it, a power that had seemed to hum like a bee tree and had made him see white light and green water even though he was looking at the shapeless brown bundle with feathers attached to it. Yes, there was still magic being kept by the People, by the old men who knew things. But in these times when everything was darkened by the coming of the white men, all the old beautiful and terrible magic that had used to visit the People
seemed to be in hiding, and a boy could see it only in his dreams or when an adult told the old stories.

“To begin,” Turtle Mother said, talking from behind the shaggy hair that hung from her head, “Weshemoneto, the Great Good Spirit, the Master of Life, who is like a mighty wind in the shape of a man, made Our Grandmother Kokomthena, and told her that she would be the Creator of people, that she should create people so that the world would not stand empty, and so someone could see its beauty. And so Our Grandmother got busy at once. Our Grandmother first created the Delawares. When she had finished them, she thought, Now I am skillful enough to make some Shawnees. So she filled her hands with clay and made an old man and an old woman, and blew in their noses to bring them to life. They were the first sept of the Shawnee. Her grandson, Rounded-Side, watched her do this and smiled. Then she created a young man and a young woman, and then she told them she was tired and was going home, and she told them to play with each other and make some children, who would be the rest of the Shawnee septs.

“But Our Grandmother had grown tired of making people, and she forgot to give the young woman her
massih,
and she forgot to give the young man his
passah-tih,
and so they did not know how to make children. She went home, calling Rounded-Side to come with her. She told him, ‘Do not stay and tease them, they have to play with each other and make children.’

“But Rounded-Side was one of those who, when they are told not to do something, think it must be fun to do that.”

The children looked at each other and giggled when she told them that. Rounded-Side was the kind of child they pretended not to be. Turtle Mother went on:

“So he told Our Grandmother, ‘I am going to hunt deer. I will come home later.’ Our Grandmother was suspicious, but she was too tired to make him obey, and she went home. She needed to rest, and to think up ways for her creations to make a living. For she was concerned about how they would be, even though she had lost interest in creating them. To this day, she cares how we are, and when the Lightning or the Wind or the Animal Masters visit her in her home by the moon, sometimes she has them bring messages and instructions down to us.

“Of course Rounded-Side sneaked back to watch the young man and young woman play with each other. And he teased them because they did not know how to make children. How could they, without their genitals? So he teased them. They had tried
making little children out of black mud, but had thrown them away across the water when they would not breathe or move.

“For two years the young couple were unable to connect themselves to make children. And to tease them, Rounded-Side created the Peckuwe Sept and the Kispoko Sept, and laughed, and said, ‘It is this easy! Yet you two cannot do it!’ ”

Turtle Mother’s voice, as she spoke the words of Rounded-Side, was lilting and saucy, as it had always been when she told such stories, but if she was allowing herself to smile, the smile could not be seen. Her children were smiling at the tone of Rounded-Side’s mocking voice. He was mischievous, but not in a wholly evil way, and children liked to hear about him because he was like them.

“Then in two years Our Grandmother was rested, and she came down. She had thought of many things to give her creations so that they could live and be healthy and good. She was not displeased that Rounded-Side had made the Peckuwes and the Kispokos. It was all right with her if someone else was making people, for she had grown tired of it, as I said before.

“Then Rounded-Side introduced Corn Woman and Pumpkin Woman to the People. Weshemoneto had made Corn Woman and Pumpkin Woman so they could help them grow food to eat. And so that the Kispoko would never be lonesome, Rounded-Side created other tribes, and gave them to the Kispokos as enemies to fight, for their joy is in fighting.”