Whatever the truth was about the spirits of small animals, Tecumseh now felt the rabbit’s swiftness and power in his own legs, and he sprang with a happy whoop over a pole fence near his home, and in his memory he saw again what had happened: the rabbit springing and dodging through the dry weed stalks and over a fallen log, a blur of brown and flashing white. And Tecumseh himself running in the same direction over the field, swinging his bow around, aiming it ahead of the rabbit and letting the arrow go with a sinewy twung! Oh, if only Chiksika could have been there to see that miraculous shot! The story of it was desperately wanting to be told, and already Tecumseh could see the astonishment and approval in Chiksika’s face. And so now Tecumseh sprinted toward the door of his family’s house like a rabbit about to dive into its burrow.
When he burst in through the low doorway the dim interior was dense with woodsmoke and steam and body smell. Beyond the flames of the fire in the center of the room his mother knelt naked, her brown shoulders agleam with oil in the beam of daylight from the smokehole above, and Star Watcher bared to the waist in the steamy room, stood over her, picking and pulling at her mother’s wet, tangled, black hair with a horn comb. Tecumseh had lifted the rabbit high to announce his feat but was stopped in confusion by this scene.
His mother, wincing from the pull on her hair, squinted at him through lanky wet strands, her teeth showing either in a grimace or a smile. He could hardly remember how she had ever looked with a smile.
“Little brother,” Star Watcher said, “go out.”
“I shot this,” he blurted. “I shot it running! Where is Chiksika? What are you doing?”
“Go out,” she repeated in a high voice. “Come home when the sun is down.” And then Tecumseh heard a sound he had not heard for a year: his mother’s laughter.
“Good, my son, my hunter!” she said, and her laughter was music. “We are proud of you! But go out for a while. It is time for me to become clean and be as I was before.”
Tecumseh stood with his mouth open for only a moment; then he understood, and his heart leaped from one joy to another. He started as if to go to her and fling his arms around her, bloody rabbit and all, but Star Watcher hurried to him and put her hand firmly on his shoulder and told him again, “Go out. Be happy about this day, and come back when we are done.”
“Where is Chiksika?” he asked. He was glowing warm all through, and he wanted to be near his big brother and share all this with him. Much of the dark cloud seemed to be off of the world today, and the boy felt the way he sometimes did when he heard the stories of the old bright days of the Beginning.
“Your brother,” she said, “is at the council lodge with Black Fish and the men. Some English soldiers are in the town.”
“English?” He felt a chill in his scalp. He knew English were white men. But his sister was smiling and for some reason did not seem alarmed that white soldiers were here.
“Chiksika will tell you. He knows more. These English want to be allies, they say. Go now.”
Now almost dazed by the whirl of good events of the day and the fearsome thought of white soldiers in Chillicothe Town, Tecumseh turned to go out, to go and find Chiksika. He heard his sister laugh behind him.
“Little brother,” she said, “you can leave the rabbit here for me to cook. You don’t have to carry it everywhere!”
When he ran off in the direction of the council lodge, he had his bow and quiver, though not his rabbit. The rabbit did not matter so much now. His head was too full of other things. It did seem that he should have the bow, because of the white soldiers. Just in case.
The packed ground of the street was hard and dry. There were no clouds in the sky, and in the sunlight the yellow-and-red leaves, those that had not yet fallen, were waving, trembling and hanging on against a cold breeze. Most of the adults walking or standing outside their lodges had blankets drawn around them. The cold air was fragrant with hardwood smoke and the aromas of roasting meat and baking Shawnee cake. From the end of the street where the council lodge stood came the drone and jabber of many excited voices, and he could see that a large part of the town’s population was there near the lodge. When he had gone out early this morning in the cold half-light to hunt, there had been no one outside the lodges, except here and there a woman squatting or a man facing a tree, making steamy water. He had hunted a long time this morning among the corn and bean fields and in the meadows along the river, and he had gone south among the trees and fields of the bottomlands below the town, among the hundreds of dead, gray trees whose bark had been stripped off to cover the wigewas of the town; then he had moved up the slope toward the woodland hills and had stalked around a large, trickling spring where he had hoped to find some animals drinking.
Springs of water were among the greatest blessings, and towns were always built where good springs were. Tecumseh knew he had been born right beside a spring, near Piqua Town. He had heard that story often enough, the story that a star had gone over the moment he was born. He remembered his father telling him that the star meant he was to be very important to the People someday, somehow. Other people told the story often, too. Sometimes when people would tell that story they would say it with the same tone in their voices that they had when they told the creation stories, and it would seem strange to realize that they were talking about him. Those were magic stories, about great powers and vast skies and bright waters, and most of the time Tecumseh did not feel there was much magic in the world. There were the usual people saying and doing the usual things, always the sad and angry talk about the coming of the Long Knives; always the women were hard at work in the fields or the houses; always the men went out on the long hunts, or to the councils, or sometimes to war. To live was hard and often uncomfortable. Sometimes one’s eyes were red and sore from smoke, or one’s skin itched from insect bites or the poison plants, or one’s hands and feet were so cold they stung, and often in the winter one’s belly would be empty for so long that it would hurt, and one’s arms would feel so weak from hunger that they were hard to lift. And often there would be the long funerals for people who had died, those long funerals in which one would have to behave in just such a manner and do just such a thing and walk in just such a line, every moment for days, though one would rather run or hunt or play or listen to storytellers. Life was a hard and stark thing, and often if there was magic at the funerals, it was the cautious magic required to satisfy the departing spirit and to keep out of its way until it had entirely left the village and gone on by one of the Roads back to the Creator. There were many rituals the living had to do when a corpse was going to the grave.
But sometimes, when one least expected it, there would be some good magic: something Cyclone Person would whisper in the treetops; or something a raccoon or fox, standing nearby and unafraid in the woods, would say with its eyes; or something little Loud Noise would say in Our Grandmother’s tongue but was understandable anyway—at least understandable in the heart.
And there was the magic in the dreams. Once, when Tecumseh had carelessly, sleepily, lain down with his head toward the west, lying as the dead lie in their graves, he had had a death dream, a dream in which huge-headed men had come riding swiftly, screaming, through yellow smoke, to kill him. From that dream he had leaped into wakefulness, sitting up in his bedding with a slamming heart, and had seen first the shimmering coals of a night fire with the dim shapes of beloved friends sitting around it looking at him. Though he had not been able to see their faces, he had known they were beloved friends. And then they had faded, and he had seen shimmering coals still, but this time in the familiar firepit of his own mother’s lodge, with the usual shapes of his mother and sister and little brothers all asleep. He had known then that he was truly awake, that he had been in two dreams, one deeper than the other. The next day he had told his mother about that dream, and she had told him that he had dreamed of his death because he had slept with his head toward the west, as the dead do, and that probably he had nearly gone away in his
sleep. She had seemed very frightened, telling him this. She had warned him many times since not to go to sleep that way again.
And then one day not long ago, while traveling with Chiksika to Piqua Town, Tecumseh had been standing in the woods near that spring where he had been born, and through his feet suddenly he had felt the earth trembling. Though he had seen nothing change on the earth in his real eyes, though he had seen no trees move or even a leaf stir, he had felt through the soles of his feet that the deep earth was unsteady, and it had made him lurch and almost fall down. With his real eyes he had seen only one sign of what was happening: the water from the spring had appeared to be running backward for a moment, running uphill toward its source. Then it had stopped and run as before, and he had become steady again.
It was said that sometimes the Great Turtle that holds up the Earth gets restless, and when it does the world trembles and waters act strangely. It was, in fact, the Great Turtle who had made it possible for the People to come to this land; the Turtle had moved, and a sea of water between this land and the Old Land had run off so that the People could cross over. Then the Turtle had settled back, and the sea had filled up again. That had happened long before the memory of anyone now alive, but the story of it had been brought along through the ages by the tribal Singers.
When Tecumseh had told Chiksika about the trembling earth and the spring water running uphill, Chiksika had told him that no one else in Piqua Town had felt the earth tremble. No one in the town had lurched or staggered, except the usual men who bought rum from traders. Chiksika then had looked at him with strange eyes and said, “It is good. Sometimes you will feel and see something no one else does. Remember that is your gift. When it is time for you to understand what they mean, the meaning will come. But if you are ever to understand them, you must always try to be worthy of your gift. If you ever fail to be worthy, the Great Good Spirit will never reveal what these signs mean, and they will only trouble you, and you might go crazy from them.”
It was when he was near springs of water that Tecumseh most often felt the magic that was in the world.
Now, trotting up the street toward the council lodge where the crowd was gathered, Tecumseh was thinking about signs and could feel upon himself the weight of the gift. As his father had told him, his life would not be easy; like a chief or a shaman, he would have more duties to do than an ordinary warrior, and the People would rely upon him, because the Panther Star in the sky at his birth had pointed him out.
“Oh,” a woman cried to another woman, “here they come!”
“Look at them,” the other squealed. “Such beautiful soldiers!”
Tecumseh could not see them yet, but he could feel a thrill of excitement running through the crowd of people. Though he was tall for his age, he could see only the backs and shoulders of the grown-up people in the pressing crowd. He was being jostled backward now by people who were surging back, making way. So he slithered forward among them, and suddenly he was on the front edge of the crowd, and there in the open, not five paces away and coming toward him, were the two biggest and most elegant men Tecumseh had ever seen. Chief Black Fish was walking between them, and he looked little. These two were glittering and blazing in the sunlight, their hair silver, their faces pale pink and grim with importance. Tecumseh looked at them with his mouth open, too stunned to move back.
Their coats were scarlet wool and covered with gold-colored metal buttons and braids of golden thread. Gleaming silver gorgets the shape of new moons flashed at their throats. Brilliant silk sashes crossed their chests, and from these hung knives as long as a man’s arm, ensheathed in black leather trimmed with silver; these, Chiksika had told him, were the weapons for whom the Long Knives had been named. The soldiers wore black leggings that reached to their thighs. And on their heads, atop the silver curls that covered their ears, they wore huge black headdresses of bear fur with plates of silver and gold in front. These men looked like sun gods.
If these were what whiteface soldiers were like, Tecumseh thought, how brave his father and brother must have been to go and fight ten hundred of them! The only white men Tecumseh had seen before were French traders, who were small, dirty men, and the naked man in the gauntlet.
Now he drew back as the giant white men came closer. He saw that Black Fish had a proud, pleased look in his eyes as he strode forward with one of these mighty men on either side.
They passed directly in front of Tecumseh, and their tread was very heavy. He was devouring with his eyes every detail of them, and through their shining glory now he was beginning to see and sense other things. The one closest to him had a sheen of sweat on his face, and there was a sore-looking red boil on his neck above his tight collar. The white of his trousers was smudged with dirt. There were spots on the scarlet coat, like those of meat grease on a dirty blanket. His leather shoes creaked and his long knife rattled as he walked by, and he sounded as if he had trouble breathing.
Then Tecumseh’s keen nostrils were assailed by the man’s smells. Eddying in the air around him were the dense, sour odors of old sweat and smoke in wool, of mouth rot and tobacco, even traces of the odors of urine and excrement. Tecumseh’s nose wrinkled, and he recoiled. Even his mother, who had not bathed herself or changed her garment in the year of her mourning, had never smelled like this. Chiksika had told Tecumseh that white men had a bad smell about them. But Tecumseh had not guessed it could be like this. He wondered how they could bear to be near each other.
And even under that repulsive stench, Tecumseh detected something else, or so he thought.
This giant, stern-faced man, who looked like a sun god, who was as thick as a large tree and taller than any warrior, walking through the town under the protective hospitality of Black Fish, smelled afraid.
“I SMELLED FEAR ON HIM,” TECUMSEH SAID TO CHIKSIKA later that day. “Can this be so?”
Chiksika paused. He had one finger in a little jar of ocher, with which he was painting lines and dots from the corners of his eyes to his ears. He was preparing for the war dance that was to be held for the white soldier chiefs.
“Yes,” Chiksika replied. “It is plain that they have some fear among us. Here is why, I think: Only last year these men were our enemies. They were with the white chief Dunmore when he came with his army. They were numerous then. Now there are just these two chiefs amid our people. These two and some men who brought horses loaded with gifts. And new guns, and much powder and lead for the guns. They are a little afraid because last year we were their enemies and we killed many of them.” Chiksika held up his mother’s old French trade mirror with his left hand and ran a line of paint along his right temple.
“Guns? Our enemies bring us guns?”
“Here is the way of it, little brother. These men come to say they now wish us to be their allies. These men tell us they belong to the British king across the Great Water over there.” He pointed with his paint-stained finger toward the east. “You have heard of the king of England. They are his. Now they want us to call that king our father. They say he is the chief of the mightiest nation in the world. Here is what has happened since last year among the white men. This they told in council today:
“They say that their king beyond the Water is angry with the white men who live on this side. The ones we call the Long Knives. They say the Long Knives are not obedient to their king anymore, and grow saucy. They say there have already been some battles between the king’s soldiers and the Long Knives. That there will surely be a war.
“They say the English king does not want the Long Knives to come into our country and take our land from us. They say we are under the protection of their king. They say that king wants us to be strong and to drive the Long Knives out of Kain-tuck-ee. And so he sends us guns and powder. And new blankets and good knives made in his country over there. And he will let his Redcoat soldier chiefs help us drive the Long Knives out of Kain-tuck-ee. Black Fish likes this. He says he wants to help the king’s soldiers do this. And so we wi
ll have a war dance for the English king’s soldier chiefs tonight.” He dipped his finger in his paint jar again, leaned toward the mirror, and made another line on his face.
“But,” Tecumseh said, remembering something, “there was a treaty made last year after the battle. Do you remember? That we would not raise our hand against the white men anymore? Was that not a kind of promise to them? I thought only the white men broke promises.”
“That treaty,” Chiksika replied, “was made by the white chief Dunmore of Virginia. He belongs to the English king. So that treaty is not broken. It is only the Long Knives who come into our country and bother us now, not the king’s white men. And the king wants us to stand against those Long Knives.”
Tecumseh thought of this and nodded. But he remembered something else. “Did not Cornstalk promise he would never raise his hand against any white men?”
“You remember things well. Cornstalk did so. And he has already told these English chiefs that he cannot help them, because of that promise. Cornstalk made himself helpless. But Black Fish did not mark a treaty. And the Shawnee law is that a man who does not make a promise is free to do what his heart tells him, even if the chief above him is bound by the promise. Black Fish is free to help the British soldiers fight the Long Knives.” Chiksika stopped painting his face and looked at his little brother. “Therefore Black Fish is very glad he did not mark the treaty. He believes that this purpose of the king of England will be a good thing for saving the People from the intrusion of the Long Knives.”
Panther in the Sky Page 10