Panther in the Sky (61 page)

They watched him as he gazed about the big room and took note of the unfamiliar interior: the huge fireplace at one end with its kettle arms and oven, the trestle table with its chairs and pewter, the hewn-log joists so low overhead that he tended to stoop as he moved under them.

And then he saw the shelves of books, and a look of childlike incredulity transformed his calm countenance. He turned, all but gasping, to Galloway, and exclaimed, “So many of books! I never did know there are so many!” An entire corner was filled with shelves of books.

Galloway beamed with more pride. “Probably the best library this side of the mountains, that’s what. They’ve been a load to carry about, but I’d not go anyplace without my books. Even Gen’l Clark didn’t have such a library, and how
that
man loves to read.”

“What is this, ‘li-ba-lelly’?” It was a hard word to say.

“Library is … well, many books in one place we call a library. So you know books, even?” Galloway was becoming more and more intrigued with his Shawnee guest.

“I know Bible. I know of Hamlet Prince and the”—he quickly searched his memory for Big Fish’s word—“the skull.”

Galloway’s eyes were wide. “Skull? You mean …”

“Ah … skull from Poor York.”

“Alas, poor Yorick!” Galloway exclaimed, posing as if talking to a skull in his outstretched hand. “I knew him …” Galloway’s
face was glowing with excitement, and his children were covering their smiles with their hands.

“You knew this York?” Tecumseh asked in amazement, and the children laughed out loud. And while Galloway was trying to explain what he meant, Mrs. Galloway was shaking her head.

“Mercy!” she said. “I’ll never get you two gents apart now!”

And thus Tecumseh began one of the most interesting evenings of his life, as did Galloway and his family. The family prayed before eating, then sat respectfully for another minute as Tecumseh prayed to Weshemoneto in his own tongue. During the dinner, Galloway fully explained to Tecumseh the tenets of his Scotch Associate religion, after which Tecumseh told of the Shawnee cosmology. He then spoke of the nation’s elaborate moral code, of which Galloway had never heard or even suspected, though he had known and fought Shawnees for years. These plainly were no soulless savages after all. Galloway was impressed by the degree to which the Shawnees’ reverence pervaded all their mundane activities.

Then Galloway spent an hour telling of the fervent revivalism that had lately been sweeping through the frontier: of Shakers, of Baptists and Methodists and evangelists of many kinds, of great gatherings of men, women, and children falling, rolling, flopping, and shouting with religious frenzy. “The bloodiest sinners are being turned into lambs of God,” he exclaimed. “These are portentous times. Many, many are preparing for the end of the world!”

Tecumseh then told an astonished Galloway of some of the religious upheavals and witch hunts and spirit societies that had swept through various Indian nations in recent decades, since the approach of the white men into the Middle Ground. Only as he talked of it did Tecumseh begin to realize how much of it must be due to the disruption of the old ways. He did not say it to the Galloways, but he understood that the white men were the reason for most of the spiritual confusion of the Lakes tribes, that this was another evil that swept in ahead of the white people.

As the evening wore on and the discussion ranged over the whole frontier, Galloway told Tecumseh more about Clark, whom Galloway still deemed the greatest white man west of the mountains, despite his penchant for strong drink, and Tecumseh had the strange experience of seeing a demon of an enemy transformed in his own imagination to a noble, God-fearing warrior of great vision and humanity.

They spoke then of Boone and But-lah. Tecumseh told of his
acquaintance with them, and the Galloways were astonished at some of the coincidences—that Boone had for a time been Tecumseh’s own foster brother, that Tecumseh had fought But-lah’s raiders at least twice in night raids and survived. Galloway told Tecumseh many good things about those two men that the Shawnee found easy to believe. But their appraisals of another well-known frontier figure were far different: Simon Girty. Girty’s name had become like a profanity among the Americans of Ohio and Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and Galloway was astonished to learn what a staunch and generous friend of the Indians he was. James Galloway was a man of many scars, and one, a bullet still lodged in his neck, had been fired at him point-blank by Girty during a skirmish. Girty had shouted words Galloway could still recall after some fifteen years. “He yelled at me just as he pulled the trigger, ‘Galloway, you son of a bitch, I’ve got you at last!’ Well, he’d got me, that’s true, and I was mighty surprised when I woke up alive. And now this ball in my neck—feel the lump back there, Chief.…” Tecumseh touched the white man’s neck with no revulsion and could feel the lead ball move strangely in the flesh. “It hurts like the devil when there’s a change of weather coming. But that makes me a better farmer. Ha, ha! For the good Lord puts some redemption in anything He does. I guess even through a bloody Tory renegade like Girty, He did a bit of good. Yes, the Lord be praised!”

Tecumseh then politely inquired how the white man’s God could let his children break so many of their promises and treaties, and when Galloway asked for examples, Tecumseh astonished him with his detailed knowledge of past treaties. Galloway shook his head and looked down in embarrassment when Tecumseh recounted how each treaty had been violated by the white men.

Later, Galloway explained to Tecumseh how a frontier becomes a territory, and a territory a state, and how the Ohio Territory was on the verge of becoming a state. He described the territorial legislature as a council. And then he described the way in which a representative from the territory would go to the grand council of the United States, called Congress. In his opinion, he said, the man most likely to go to the Congress from Ohio was a very young man, already secretary of the Ohio Territory. When Galloway mentioned this man’s name, Tecumseh grew rigid.

“What’s wrong, my friend?”

“This is Harrison who was chieftain of Wayne?”

“Aye, the very one. William Henry Harrison. Goes from one
high place to the next one up, quite regular. Knows presidents personally, they say. He’s a man bound to get important, mark my word. Don’t tell me you know him, too!”

The name had cast a chill over Tecumseh. But of course he could not explain to Galloway and his family his dreams, his signs, or his premonitions about this man Harrison. “Only have seen him in battle,” he said.

The meal had been of venison and squash and a kind of cornmeal bread very familiar to Tecumseh. To turn the talk away from Harrison, Tecumseh began telling Mrs. Galloway how good the food had been and asked her what the white people called this kind of bread.

“Why, sir,” she replied, “we just call it johnnycake.”

“Aha,” he said, raising a brown forefinger, “you say wrong!”

She touched her throat. “Sir?”

“Not say it right.
Shawnee
cake! My people teach your people to make this, but you forget our name! Ha, ha!”

Everyone laughed at this welcome levity. “Shawnee, Johnny! They sound the same!” the yellow-haired girl Rebekah piped up. “Is that really true, Mister Tecumtheh Chief?” Her blue eyes were enormous with the excitement of speaking directly to this glorious man. With her missing front teeth, she could not pronounce a hard
s,
so her pronunciation was closer to the lisplike Shawnee pronunciation of the letter.

“I say only truth always, Ga-lo-weh’s girl. And you, you are first white person who ever say my name right. Te-cum …” He elaborately formed his lips for the soft sound, and she watched minutely from across the table, unconsciously shaping hers the same way, like a little kiss.

“Ftha!” he said.

“Ftha!” she said, and then in embarrassment covered her toothless smile with both hands.

“Ah! Ha, ha!” Tecumseh laughed, and his eyes sparkled with genuine enjoyment. “Say right! I like this Lebekah!”

“And I like you, Mister Tecum … ftha!”

“We all like you, Chief Tecum-fa!” Galloway exclaimed, trying to make the sound. He spread his arms. “By heavens, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt so good inside, without whiskey! Ha! Now, sir, I would like you to know that I am your friend, and my door will always be open to you!”

“I am your friend, Ga-lo-weh,” Tecumseh said, surprised that the swelling of his heart had caused him to say such a thing to a white man who now ripped up the earth of Chillicothe. “Whatever
come, be sure in your heart that no people of mine ever hurt anyone of family Ga-lo-weh!”

And they all felt so warm that they did not even consider what he might have meant by “whatever come.”

R
IDING HOMEWARD THROUGH THE HAZY, GOLDEN FALL
days, Tecumseh decided to veer north up the old trace to Piqua and then on toward Wapakoneta. He had to see with his own eyes what Breaker-in-Pieces had said about Black Hoof and his People.

The trace was a road now. Wagon tracks scarred the soil. Columns of smoke leaned into the blue sky, marking the clearing of land, and wherever an old Shawnee town had stood there were log houses and white men’s towns being built. Tecumseh would turn off the road and wait at a distance whenever he heard a wagon or horses coming. He did not care to have any unnecessary confrontations with white men who now considered this their land. He would sit on horseback and look at forts from afar. Near the forts there were white men’s towns, and near those towns there were shabby little Indian camps—Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis, all mixed together—and in those camps many of the People wore ragged white men’s clothes and were sickly and stupid with drink.

Arriving at Wapakoneta, Tecumseh was shocked by the circumstances of the main Shawnee tribe. Some were living in square houses, of poles chinked with mud, houses lined up along straight dirt streets. Pigs ran in the streets, those ugly little creatures of dirty meat, whom the Masters of the Game had given no souls. This meant the Shawnees now were eating foods without spirit. There were pole fences around the houses. Long-eared dogs lay in the yards.

Black Hoof came out with a gathering crowd to greet him, and the old chief was a spectacle to make his heart sink. He wore a black wool frock coat with long tails, dusty with dried dirt, and a stained white stock, gray knee breeches, and muddy boots. His silver hair was lank and unkempt, his craggy brown face ever more deeply lined and careworn. He was fully a white man’s Indian now, a farmer; the hand that took Tecumseh’s was hard with thick calluses.

Black Hoof talked long and hopefully about the new life of his tribe, of the wonderful ground-cutting plows they had been promised by the government, of the government men who were to come someday soon and teach them how to harness mules and
cut ground with the plows. Black Hoof admitted reluctantly that the People had been waiting longer than they had expected for these promises to be fulfilled and were still farming with hoes. Whatever plows arrived, it seemed, the white people got them.

“Ah, yes,” Tecumseh said. “For the white men’s promises, I hope you will live a long time, Father.”

Black Hoof frowned. He said that was not a good way to think of the white men’s nation. He said he was worried that Tecumseh and his followers might have much trouble with the white men because of their hatred, and he said he would be happier if Tecumseh had signed the Greenville Treaty so there would always be peace.

“What, Father?” Tecumseh cried. “Are you not happy, in your heart, that some of your People are still free, to hunt and fish in the way of our grandfathers, to strike back when someone hurts us? In your heart, do you really want us to be tethered by our necks, as these of yours are, tamed and helpless like the Moravians, eating pig meat and drinking whiskey and getting the white man’s sicknesses? Do you really in your heart want us all to be dead in our bodies, grabbing for what the white man’s government throws us, waiting forever for plows to come so our proud hunters may stoop and sweat in the fields? Does my father Black Hoof the renowned warrior really believe his People should live like this? Would it not be better to die quickly under the white man’s gun than slowly under his boot?”

Black Hoof sat and took this tirade, his mouth downturned and his eyes glittering wet, and finally all he could say was:

“My son. You know already that it is a hard thing to be chief of a People even in the fairest of times. For many years I have been their chief, in the worst time we ever knew. Finally one cannot bear to hear the women and children cry in fear anymore, or cry for their fathers and brothers and sons who do not come back from battle. That, my son, is when a chief says, ‘No more tears, no more blood. Lay down your treaty and show me where to mark on it!’ ” His voice quavered. “It grows too hard after a long time, my son. The chief must protect his People from harm.”

“Father,” Tecumseh said, “you are a great man, and I always loved you and listened to you. Never has any chief had to lead his People through a worse time; what you say about that is true. But do you think your People will not cry anymore when they live like this? Maybe you do not see tears on their cheeks. But inside their breasts they cry without sound, and all their grandfathers and grandmothers back to the Beginning cry for them. But
the old ones do not have to cry for
us,
for
my
People, who still hunt and fish and dance. My free People. They do not weep for them.”

“Perhaps not,” said Black Hoof. “Not yet.”

Tecumseh dined with Black Hoof and slept in his house that night and by morning felt lice on his body. As he mounted to ride out of Wapakoneta, Black Hoof reached up and took his hand and implored:

“Avoid trouble with the whites if you can, my son. Do not hate them so much that you fight foolish battles you cannot win. Do not let hatred blind you. Remember that white people are not really the spawn of the Serpent, but only a people, who believe they do right. Some of them are good, though you may find that hard to believe.”