Panther in the Sky (34 page)

O
NE NIGHT IN THE
H
UNGER
M
OON, WHEN THREE MILD DAYS
had melted all the snow and then a hard cold had come down again to freeze the waters and the ground, and the moon was almost full, high above the bare black branches, sending down so much milky light that they could see their way at midnight, Tecumseh and Big Fish were walking home from a long hunt, walking across the shadow-striped forest floor, their feet rustling the frost-sparkling dead leaves, three rabbits hanging over Tecumseh’s shoulder and a raccoon over Big Fish’s, and Tecumseh was so stirred by the silvery-cold beauty of the world that he asked:

“Big Fish, do you know anything of the book that has the God’s words?”

“The Bible?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. We had to read it all the time.” He used the white man’s word “read” even though he was speaking in Shawnee, because there was no Shawnee word for that.

“You
had
to?”

“My father made us read it. Once, for a while, he thought I might become a … preacher.”

“What is this ‘preacher’?”

“A, something like a shaman, I think. And a little like a Singer, too.”

“Did you
like
to read on this Bible you had to read on?”

“Oh, some of the stories I liked. A lot of it was tiresome. Who was whose father and grandfather and great-grandfather and all that.”

“This Bible has
stories?”

“Oh, it is mostly stories. Mostly about Hebrews.”

“Hebrews?” Tecumseh shaped the word.

“They were a kind of tribe a long time ago. They moved around a lot, and increased a lot, and fought a lot.”

“Ah,” Tecumseh exclaimed. “Like the Shawnees!”

“I guess. They had chiefs. These Hebrew men ran everything. Their wives don’t get spoken about very much in the Bible.” He shrugged.

“Not so much like the Shawnee, then. Our women speak up. We have women who are chiefs. Tell me, Big Fish, why the Hebrews moved around so much. This is interesting.”

“Well, there were enemies they had, called Egyptians. These enemies were rich and had big armies.”

“Ah,” said Tecumseh. “Were these E-zhip-sins white?”

“I don’t think so. Anyway, once the Hebrews were sort of their slaves.”

“Ah. There should not be slaves.”

“One of the Hebrew big chiefs was Moses. He led them out of Egypt, and they got across the … the, ah, Great Water, when God made the water separate, and they just walked across on land with a wall of water on either side. That might sound hard to believe, but it’s in the Bible, so it must be so.”

“Why would it be hard to believe? That is how the Shawnees came to this land. Across a path of land that was made in the Great Water to the west.”

“You don’t say so! You mean your god parted the waters, too?”

“In some way. Black Hoof says First Man sang on the other side of the water for twelve days, and then the water parted and the People walked over here on the bottom, and when they looked back, it was water again behind them. It is believed that the Great Turtle that holds the land on his back rose up a little and the water ran off and that made the path.”

“Great Turtle?” Big Fish exclaimed. “You believe that a turtle holds up the land?”

“I believe what we have been told from the Beginning. We remember it all. We remember it by singing it and saying it. Maybe you remember it by putting it in your God book. Maybe your Chief Moses sang on the other side of the water, and the Great Turtle rose up, but your Hebrews, being white men, could not see the Great Turtle.”

“Why couldn’t they see it, if the Shawnees can?”

“I don’t know why not, Big Fish. But I have talked with Boone, and our warriors have talked with many other white men, who all said that they do not believe things they cannot see. They do not believe the spirits that live in things. But yet you believe your God parted the waters, and you have not seen that.”

Big Fish looked out of the sides of his eyes at Tecumseh as they walked in the moonlight. Never in his life had he been in a conversation like this. He said, “What kinds of things have you seen that I’ve never seen?”

“For one, I have felt the earth tremble under my feet when no one else felt it. Since then I have been able to sense where it starts, which is out there.” He pointed toward the southwest. “I have not been to the place where it starts, but if I went to that place, even if nothing, not even a tree, stood there to mark it, I
would know I was at the place. This is going to be important somehow, but I don’t know yet. That is one thing.”

“What else have you seen?” Big Fish asked, and now there was a new tone in his voice, as if he were talking with a preacher.

“In my Vision Quest, I looked at a white bird until it spoke to me, and I could understand what it said to me. Such a bird is one’s Spirit Helper. With someone else it might be a rabbit or a squirrel that becomes a small man in a tree and speaks. It was very important what the white bird said. Often a Spirit Helper will tell you how to heal something. Mine told me something bigger than that.”

“What did the white bird say to you that you understood?” Big Fish asked after it became apparent that Tecumseh was not going on with his story.

“You could not understand.”

Big Fish got a little angry. “I am a Shawnee, too,” he said. “I am not a white man anymore.”

“I know, brother. But one cannot understand what another’s Spirit Helper says. You have to find and listen to your own. And its message does not come in words, so I cannot tell you in words, and so how can I tell you? That is all I can say about it. I would tell you more if I could make you understand.”

“What kind of a bird was it, your Spirit Helper? You don’t see many white birds. Not in the woods.”

“A sort of dove.”

“A
white
dove?”

“Yes. Most of them are gray.”

“I know,” said Big Fish. “The only white one I ever knew of was in the Bible. I mean, I guess it was white. I always see it that way when I read about it.…”

“You
see
a dove when you read? Are you talking about the pictures that are in a book?”

“No. No pictures. You just
see
what you’re reading about.”

“Do I understand this? To read, you look at the black words on the leaves of the book, but even then you
see
the white dove?”

Big Fish thought for a while, then said, “Yes. Sometimes.” He had read a great deal in his life, but he had never even thought of it this way, and yet it was so.

Tecumseh thought: Then the white people do have some kinds of medicine power. This was the first evidence he had seen of it. He said, “Tell me of this white dove in the Bible.”

“Noah sent it out from the boat in the Great Flood, to see if it could find land.”

“So the white man’s book has a flood, too? And you say a dove was sent out to find ’a place to land?”

“Yes!” Big Fish was growing quite mystified, to find that so many things were the same, even though so much was anything but the same. “It rained for forty days and forty nights, and that made the flood. Is that what happened in your story, too?”

“Not quite. It happened this way: that Our Grandmother’s naughty grandson, Rounded-Side, who always did what she told him not to do, took his knife and cut open the big stomach of a giant man who had drunk all the waters of the earth, and the water came spilling out, and drowned the earth, and only the good people escaped, in a boat. After a long time Our Grandmother sent a crayfish down in the water to bring up some mud. Then she called a buzzard, and put the mud on his wings, and told him to fly until it dried. When it was dry, the People got on the mud and they live on it because it is the earth.”

“A buzzard!” Big Fish exclaimed. “What a story that is! My head is going around! And who is Our Grandmother, anyway?”

“It is a shame Black Hoof is so busy with white man trouble. He knows all this and should tell you, as he is your father. Our Grandmother is the Creator. It is like this:

“Weshemoneto, in the Beginning, lived above the sun. He was invisible, like wind, but in the shape of a man. He made Our Grandmother, Kokomthena, and gave her the task of creating man, and she did it. Rounded-Side helped her, but only because he was not supposed to. Would you like to see Our Grandmother?”

“Can I?”

Tecumseh stopped and pointed into the sky.

“You mean, the moon is her?”

“No. But the moon is near her house, close enough that she can use it for her looking-glass. And if you look at it now when it is round, you can see her shadow in it. You see her cooking over a pot. You can see that she wears a short skirt. Also up there you can see the shadow of her little dog, and of Rounded-Side, and of two other grandsons who are Our Grandmother’s Silly Boys.”

Big Fish suddenly laughed, looking at the moon. “Silly Boys!”

“Yes. Can you see them all?”

“Not really. We … the white people, I mean, look for a man in the moon.”

“A man! Who is that man? Is he a Creator?”

“No … nobody. Just … I don’t know. I myself never could
make him out. But I sure can’t see all those people and dogs, either.”

“No. You have to look a while, and we don’t have time now. Our Grandmother is through creating things. That happened during the Third Time. We are now living in the Fourth Time, and she does not create anymore. But she does still send messages and wisdom to us when we need to know something.”

“How does she do that?”

“Sometimes,” Tecumseh said, “she sends it by one of the Truth-Bearers. These are Tobacco, Sky, the Thunderbirds, the Four Winds, Water, and the Stars.
Nilu famu,
sacred tobacco, is the principal Truth-Bearer. When Tobacco is placed in the sacred fire, its smoke goes up, carrying the words of prayers.”

“That’s strange. White people think tobacco is a thing of the Devil. Some do, anyway. Even people who smoke it admit the Devil’s got them.”

“If a Shawnee thought Matchemoneto was in tobacco, he would not use it,” Tecumseh said with an edge of scorn in his voice. “Anyway, our sacred tobacco we do not smoke in pipes, but put in the sacred fire, as I just told you. The tobacco we smoke is just for pleasure. And I was going to tell you one more way Our Grandmother sends us messages. She tells them to a prophet.”

“Ah! Prophets! The Bible has prophets, too!”

“I think,” said Tecumseh, starting to walk along again in the crunching leaves, “that my brother Loud Noise is going to be a prophet. He can still speak in Our Grandmother’s secret tongue.”

Big Fish looked incredulously at Tecumseh. “Your brother?” Big Fish had already observed to his own satisfaction that Loud Noise was only a crazy pest, a cracked-brain, if anything, more akin to the Devil than to the Creator. But he did not dare say this to Tecumseh, especially not now.

“Yes. Someday we will see.” Tecumseh could smell woodsmoke now. “The town is just beyond,” he said, pointing ahead. “Sometime I would like you to tell me about this Chief Moses. I am interested in how he handled his enemies.”

“He had more trouble with his own tribe than he did with his enemies, it seems to me,” Big Fish mused.

Tecumseh thought of that. He sensed there would be something important for him in the story of Chief Moses helping his people. Tecumseh walked on in the cold moonlight, watching his breath condense before him. He wanted to say something to Big
Fish about the books he had but thought that this was perhaps not yet the time.

But soon, he thought. I waited too long to ask Copper Hair.

“Tell me something,” said Big Fish after a while. He had been walking along wrapped in thought about all these things he had heard. “That Grandmother’s language your brother speaks …” He paused, uncertain whether he should dare to say this. “Is that all that noise he blows out of his behind?”

Tecumseh whooped, popped the white boy on the head with his hand, and laughed so loud in the still night that dogs in the distant town started barking. “Big Fish,” he exclaimed when he could finally speak, “you’re a contrary!”

I
N THE SPRINGTIME
C
HIKSIKA STOOD ON A HIGH PLACE THAT
made his heart feel full of power. Five hundred feet below him flowed the Beautiful River, and the Scioto-se-pe ran into it just upstream. The stone promontory upon which he stood was a sacred place, where the shamans of the ancient tribes had held their ceremonies hundreds of years before the coming of the white men. So often they had made great magic here that grass could not grow near the place.

This great rock projected out from the bluff like the head of a giant raven. Under the overhanging rock there were caves full of the bones and bowls and weapons of the Ancient Peoples. And on the Raven’s Head itself stood a crumbling stone tower that had been used as a signal light by the race of giant white Indians whose ghosts now reigned over all of Kain-tuck-ee.

From this high place Chiksika could see so far up and down the curves of the Beautiful River that a boat coming into view with the first morning light would still be in view at noon.

And that was why Chiksika was here. From this height he could see the white men’s big boats, those floating houses of theirs that were big enough to carry even horses and cattle and wagons, when they were so far away they looked like dots on the river. And then he could signal to the warriors where they waited along the shores far below, where they waited near their swift canoes, and tell them what they needed to know to attack the boats when they came down. Since the Long Knife Clark had captured the Middle Ground from the British and destroyed the Shawnee towns, white men had been coming down in hundreds of boats, to get Kain-tuck-ee land. And the warriors, with Chiksika up here as their raven-eyes, preyed on the boats. They took scalps and weapons and powder and lead, and tools and grain and whiskey
and horses, all to rebuild the strength of their nation which Clark had hurt so badly. Long ago, said the legends in the Delaware picture-stories, the ancestors of the Shawnees had gone down to the great Falling Water place and killed all the arrogant white giants.