Panther in the Sky (8 page)

“I hope the Long Knife gets this far. I will be the one who knocks him to his knees if he does! Ha!”

“Ha, ha! Or I will!”

“He surely won’t get past the two of us!”

Soon the parallel lines of people grew more subdued, looking down the line, waiting for the white man to appear. The lines were very long; there were people here not only from Kispoko Town but also many from the other Shawnee towns across the river. The captive might well not make it this far.

“They say this whiteface wants to become one of our people,” Stands Firm said.

“He does?” said Chiksika, surprised.

“I talked to the one who caught the whiteface and brought him here. They say he was very good on the trail, that he does not like being a white boy.”

“Eh, so,” Chiksika replied, looking bemused. “I can understand that.” But his eagerness to whip the whiteface was diminished a little, somehow. It would be harder to hate somebody who
wanted
to be a Shawnee.

Now a drum sounded up by the lodge, a slow, two-beat rhythm, like a heartbeat, growing faster and faster. Then it stopped. Hard Striker appeared in front of the lodge, wearing red leggings and a chest-plate made of rows of colored quills. He held in his left hand a long pole decorated with scalplocks. He struck the ground twice with the butt of his pole, and then the drum beat twice. Everyone looked down the other way then. The voices rose to an excited murmur.

And then at that far end, two hundred paces away, a single figure was thrust out between the two rows of townspeople. His blue coat made him easy to see. Then two warriors stepped close to the captive and cut and tore away all his clothing. Now he was even more conspicuous. Little Tecumseh’s mouth gaped. Here was something he had never seen before: a person whose whole
body was white like a fish’s belly. This image was so strange, and so curiously beautiful, that it was as if he were not really standing here but hearing one of the old ones tell a legend. There were legends of people with white bodies, and Tecumseh had seen them in his mind while listening.

But he was here, with the dust and the crowd, their howling laughter. This was real, and the moment was frightful. He cringed back and wrapped his arms around Chiksika’s leg, dropping his switch, his face contorting as if he were going to cry.

“No, no,” Chiksika exclaimed, leaning down over him, frowning, pulling his arms away. He picked up the stick and put it in Tecumseh’s right hand. Then he pointed toward the white slip of a figure down the way and said loudly in his ear: “That is a whiteface! He is bad. When he runs past us here, you must try to hit him. That’s what this stick is for: to hit him as hard as you can. Don’t be afraid, little brother. Do you hear me?”

The child nodded. His eyes were still wild with fright, but he always did what Chiksika said. He would do anything to please his brother. In his mind he remembered the hoop rolling between the two lines of boys, and he thought now that this striking of the white person must be some sort of a game, like arrow-and-hoop.

Tecumseh had heard of whitefaces often, and he had sensed the tone in which they were mentioned, as when bad spirits were spoken of, but he had never imagined that the thing called a whiteface could be actually a person who was white all over, that the white-bodied whiteface would come by like a hoop in a game, that he was supposed to hit it with a stick, that it would come close enough to be hit with a stick. He was afraid now of what was about to happen. But he was also eager to do anything that would make his brother smile on him.

Then there was a drumbeat at the lodge. The voices rose to a scream.

At the other end of the line, a warrior hit the white person from behind with a long staff, nearly knocking him off his feet, and as he staggered and hesitated, all the people near him began lashing at him with their switches.

Then he suddenly sprinted away in a crouch, and he was coming up the line very fast, white legs pumping, white arms held up to fend off blows to his head. As he came, the sticks slashed out at him, hundreds of them, blurred and whistling. The people near Tecumseh were practically dancing with eagerness as he
came on; their hands strained with their grip on their sticks and switches. Tecumseh was trembling with the awful excitement.

The runner was coming so fast that many of the whips were missing him. He stumbled once, over a staff someone had thrust at his legs. His hands touched the ground, but he righted himself and came on, crouching and staggering, sometimes jerking his head aside in pain, but still coming fast.

At ten paces the bloody welts on his white skin were plain, and he seemed to be weakening. There was black hair on his groin. His face was a bloody grimace. Now his sprinting step had been beaten out of him, and he was merely weaving and plodding and trying to stay upright. He was coming so slowly now that everyone was hitting him, some more than once. His eyes were rolling wildly. Suddenly he sagged to his knees under the blow of a stout pole.

For an instant Tecumseh could see the blood-spattered white body falling to the dust right before him; then a mass of bare legs and skirts blocked his sight as the people moved in to surround the fallen figure. Then it was all dust and howling, the whistling and slashing of limber whips. It went on for a long while before Chiksika came back to Tecumseh from the center of it, and his sweaty face bent down to the child, happy and crazy-eyed. His hand grasped Tecumseh’s arm and pulled him. “Come! Use your stick! You must count a coup on the Long Knife!” He wedged a way in among the milling people and pushed Tecumseh forward. “Now hit him!”

The white body was curled up, on elbows and knees, still moving, struggling to rise. The strange white skin was crisscrossed with welts and bleeding cuts, smeared with blood and smudged with dust and dirt from the street. Switches were still slashing and smacking, making blood spray, and the body twitched with the blows. The white person’s head, its dark hair lank with sweat and blood and spotted with bits of chaff, turned slightly, and now Tecumseh saw the side of the face, very close. It was all red with blood, and only the teeth showed white now.

“Hit him, little brother!” Chiksika shouted in the child’s ear.

And now Tecumseh, all sick and frightened and confused inside, feeling as he had never felt before, did what his big brother told him to do. He raised his stick and whipped at the living thing before him. The Shawnees did not whip their children, so he did not know what whipping felt like; only in accidents at play had he ever felt pain. The turmoil rose and rose inside him, and he slashed again and again with his stick, the stick from the cackling
old grandmother’s fence. He got closer over the cringing, bloody body and whipped with all his might. He was not whipping a person now, he was lashing out against his own unbearable feelings. He was fighting against a terror. He loved and hated this poor struggling thing before him, and it was blurred by his tears.

Other people were still whipping at it, and Tecumseh was now so close over it that some of their sticks hit his own arms and back. One blow stung his ear so sharply that his nose began to run. But he kept whipping, even though now he knew that whips hurt terribly. Everything was red and yellow. Tecumseh sobbed and screeched and whipped and could not stop.

Finally it was Chiksika himself who took hold of Tecumseh’s arms and pulled him off. The battered body was flat on the ground now and no longer moving. The people were backing off, reforming their two lines.

“Eh! You are a fury!” Chiksika told the child. “The whitefaces had better be wary of Tecumseh! Ha, ha!”

But the child was too sick and dizzy to hear the words. And for once, Chiksika’s pleasure did not make Tecumseh laugh.

T
HE YOUNG WHITE MAN WAS TAKEN AWAY TO A LODGE
where women would feed him and heal his wounds with herbs and ointments. He had proven himself strong and brave by not crying out once, and thus it was assured that he would be adopted into the tribe.

And so Chiksika would tell people: “Yes, he must be strong, to be alive after the beating our Tecumseh gave him! Ha, ha!”

Tecumseh was sick and troubled by dreams for several days after that, but soon the easy flow of the summer days soothed his soul, and everything was as it had been.

One day as the light of the late afternoon sun glowed golden in the village and over the woods and meadows all around, Hard Striker sat by his lodge with his wife and waited for Tecumseh to come in from play. The child came running, tired, hungry, and happy, and he saw his father summoning him with a wave of his hand. He came and stood before him, and Hard Striker said:

“My son, I have something to tell you about yourself. It is the most important thing you will ever know. It is time to tell you because I think you are old enough now.” His father’s face was like stone, but his voice was soft and warm.

“You were born under a great sign, the sign of the Panther leaping across the sky. To be born under a great sign means that you will have a great thing to do, and your life will not be easy.”

It was as if his father’s voice itself had weight, and he felt the weight settle on him.

His life, which had always been play and love and happiness, with everything easy to understand, was changing.

That night he dreamed of whitefaces, of a white bird, of yellow dust and great thunder noises, and he woke up crying.

His mother had to hold him until he was quiet.

She put her cheek against his and whispered to him: “For once it is not your little brother Loud Noise who cries in the night. Now go back to sleep. You are in your family, and all is good.”

“S
EE THIS,
” C
HIKSIKA TOLD
T
ECUMSEH, KNEELING BESIDE
him in a sunny glade in the deep green woods. The forest there was of enormous hardwoods. The ground under the trees was pleasantly open and free of deadwood and underbrush, because it was close to the village, and firewood gatherers kept it clean. Chiksika pointed at a plant. Many other plants like it were growing in the glade. “This is the poison vine that made your skin itch last spring. Know it by the three notched leaves. You must know the shape of the leaves and stay out of it. But if you do get it on your skin … Come here now.” He rose and walked a few steps and knelt again. “Now see this plant.” It had a light green, oval-shaped leaf.

“I know that one,” Tecumseh said. He knelt beside Chiksika, his small bow in his left hand. “In the summer it has the little orange flowers, and the little hummingbirds go to it.”

“Yes. Good,” said Chiksika. “And now see this, how much juice comes out when I break the stem. Now, brother, if you get the poison plant on your skin, then you should come and get this plant, and mash the stems and leaves and rub their juice on your skin, and the itch will stop, and the sores will go away. This is
what Mother put on you to cure you when you got into the poison plant.”

“Ah!”

“Is it not good how Our Grandmother Kokomthena who lives beside the moon has made the world?” Chiksika said, smiling and squeezing Tecumseh’s shoulder. “She has created something for everything. If she makes a poison, she also makes something to cure the poison.”

“Yes. But why did she make the poison?”

Chiksika paused. That was the kind of question Tecumseh would always ask in the middle of a lesson. Now Chiksika replied: “So that there will be more to know, and to show us how much she thinks of us. Do you remember the root I showed you which cures the bite of the rattlesnake?”

“Yes. Pocono.”

“Good. Now I know you are going to ask me why Our Grandmother made the rattlesnake with poison, so I will answer before you ask. This she did so that we will be careful not to step on him. He has a privilege not to be stepped upon. But she also put a warning noise on him so that a careless person will not be bitten by mistake.”

Tecumseh thought for a moment. “Then why,” he asked, “did not Our Grandmother put a warning noise on the poison ivy?”

Chiksika shook his head, then laughed. “You!” he exclaimed, and popped him on the head with his fingertips.

“Or on the copperhead snake?” Tecumseh kept on.

“So you will have to stay alert and watch for things! And so there will be more for you to learn. Now.” He reached out and touched the jewelweed plant again, and he said in the voice he used when he was reaching the main point in a lesson, “You will see that wherever the poison leaves grow, nearby grow these that cure the poison. Everything in the world Our Grandmother created just so. For every evil spirit there is a good spirit. But one must learn everything, or these creations will do you no good. Do you see?”

Tecumseh nodded. He rubbed a jewelweed leaf between his finger and thumb and felt its healing juice, and he thought how wise the Creator had been. He smiled at Chiksika, white teeth flashing in his coppery face. “Now what else?” he said.

Chiksika laughed aloud. “More! More! My little brother wants to know everything before he is seven summers old!”

“Yes! What about the mockingbird? When his funny noises
made me laugh this morning, you said you would tell me about why he makes such funny talk.”

“Ah. For this reason,” Chiksika said. “It is to guard the place where he lives. He learns the songs of many other birds. Then he sits near his home and makes himself sound like a forest full of birds. And so, when other birds come near his territory, they will think it is already crowded with too many birds and will go away.”

“Ah! How smart he is!”

“Oh, yes. Kokomthena made all the birds and animals smart in their ways, so they can get along. The birds are a people, just as we are, and the wolves are a people, and deer and bears. And all are smart in their ways. A great hunter is one who knows how the different races of animals are smart. If he knows this, then he can think like them and know where they will be at a time of the day. The Great Good Spirit made Kokomthena very wise, so that she could create smart and happy creatures on the world.”