Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Black Fish studied the prisoner and listened to hear how so many Long Knives had been caught without a fight.

  It had happened at a great salt lick called Blue Licks, which had been used for ages by red men. These whitefaces had been there boiling brine to make salt for their fort. The one called Boone had been surprised alone one day hunting meat for the salt makers, surrounded, and disarmed. Blue Jacket had questioned him. Boone at first had claimed to be alone, but Chiksika’s scouts found the salt makers at the lick, and Boone had admitted that they were his men. Blue Jacket then had convinced Boone that he should persuade his men to surrender peacefully, in order to save their lives. Seeing that the Shawnees were four times their number, Boone had been wise enough to agree. So the Shawnees had surrounded the salt lick and sent Boone in, and he had talked to them, and they had given up without any struggle.

  Chiksika nodded his confirmation of details as Blue Jacket related the story. The crowd in the council lodge murmured its approval. Black Fish then stood and told the council that Blue Jacket and his warriors had done an outstanding deed, and that the British Chief Hamilton would pay the Shawnees richly for such a large body of men. “You have acted wisely. Some young warriors would have followed the heat of their vengeance and would have rushed in to kill. Many warriors then would have been hurt, perhaps killed. And there would have been only scalps to sell at Detroit. Each of these prisoners alive is worth four times as much as his scalp alone is worth. Let us all think how well Blue Jacket and Chiksika and Stands Firm have done this. For his prudent thinking, I recommend that Blue Jacket should be named a war chieftain.”

  “Ah-i-ee! Ho! Ah-i-ee!” At the warmth of the men’s response, Blue Jacket seemed to swell up. Black Fish went on:

  “I am pleased above all that he caught the chief called Boone, whom you see here.” Boone faced Black Fish when he heard his name and smiled. Black Fish paused, looking studiously at Boone, then continued. “I recognize this Boone. I saw him shoot and kill my son in battle.” There was a murmur of voices in the room. “I would have the right to kill this Boone today. But I have been looking at him, and here is what I have been thinking. This Boone is a kind of man who should be a Shawnee, not a Long Knife. Look how he has no fear. We have known of this man for a long time. I have fought against him, and I know he is brave and quick and cunning in a fight. I know his word is good. He told Blue Jacket he would persuade his men to surrender, and he went to them and did so, even though he might have told them to pick up their guns and fight. Look at him now and you can see that he is cheerful and unafraid.

  “Listen: If this Boone would want to become a Shawnee, I would want to adopt him as a son of my own. That is the right of one whose own son has been slain, and I would choose to do it.”

  Many in the big lodge murmured in surprise. Many of them nodded. Many seemed to approve of this idea, especially the warriors who had captured Boone. In the long march from the Blue Licks they had come to like and admire him very much. Black Fish continued:

  “I now ask Chiksika, who has become one of my sons. Would you like to have this Boone as your brother?”

  “If his heart tells him to join us,” Chiksika said, “I would welcome him as my brother. Yes!”

  Black Fish’s craggy, hard face now, as it often did, melted with the warmth from inside him. Steely warrior though he was, he was also known as a man of the most generous impulses, and this great warmth of his heart had made him the foster father and teacher of many. Though he bore ugly scars and bitter memories from his long conflict with the white men, he was willing to trust and embrace even the one who had killed his son, if he saw just the right thing in his face. He turned to Blue Jacket and said:

  “Talk to this Boone. Tell him what I have said. Ask him if he would give his heart to us and be our brother. Let him think about it until he is sure.” Boone seemed to be listening with lively curiosity to all this; it appeared that perhaps he was understanding enough of the words to have some notion of what was going on. “Then,” Black Fish concluded, “if he so chooses, when you take your prisoners to Detroit, you will not sell Boone to the British chief. You will show him that you have caught Boone. Maybe this British chief will offer you a very high price for Boone, but you will say, ‘No, this Boone wants to return to Chillicothe and become a Shawnee, a son of Black Fish.’ ” He paused and stood very straight and smiled. “That will make a strong impression on the British chief. Probably he would even want to tell his king of England about it.”

  It was plain that in addition to his warm impulses, Black Fish like many Shawnee had an eye toward his own legend.

  And so it followed, early in 1778, that Daniel Boone became a favorite son of Black Fish and thus a foster brother of Tecumseh. As a jocular reference to Boone’s quickness, Black Fish named him Sheltowee, which meant Big Turtle.

  SOME DAYS BIG TURTLE WOULD SIT IN THE SUNSHINE FOR hours, wincing, while the children took turns at the tedious task of plucking out his whisker stubble, bit by bit getting rid of his facial hair as the Shawnee men did theirs.

  He was learning the Shawnee tongue quickly, and with the help of sign language he told many amazing stories of his adventures, always stating them in a way that flattered the red men, even those he had outfought and outwitted and outrun. Tecumseh and Chiksika and their whole family became as enchanted with this new member as Black Fish had in the beginning. Even Turtle Mother with her great bitterness toward white men would have to smile in fond amusement as this fabled leader of the evil race entertained her three little sons, carved wooden toys for them, played games with them, and told them interesting things about the white people’s beliefs.

  As winter melted into spring and mild breezes encouraged the leaf buds and the tiny forest flowers to show themselves, Chiksika began to take Big Turtle and Tecumseh with him when he would lead hunting parties down into the rolling hills toward the Beautiful River and westward toward the Whitewater. On these hunting expeditions, Big Turtle showed time after time that he was the equal of the best of the Shawnee hunters and trackers. He could think like a deer and go where he knew they would go, and when he shot at an animal, he seldom missed its heart. He was fast as a rabbit on foot and could lope for hours without tiring. He was as natural a horseman, with or without saddle, as any of the riders. Tecumseh had his own white pony and had already learned to ride so well that he was like a part of the animal. He would guide the pony, even at an all-out run, with the pressure of his knees, with both hands free to use his bow. Tecumseh felt himself fully a man when he rode between Chiksika and Big Turtle, with the sound of a score of mounted hunters coming along behind them. His heart and soul swelled with happiness each time they rode over the crest of a hill and he saw new lands stretching away, meadows of flowers more numerous than the stars in a night sky, forests of enormous hardwood trees in their pale, delicate dress of new foliage, bold, blue-gray stone bluffs above curving river courses, flights of iridescent passenger pigeons swooping through the air, flocks as vast as clouds, their wingbeats like wind gusts; small herds of bison moving slowly along the roads they had trampled out from river to river; roaring tornadoes in which Cyclone Person reached down with black fingers from a greenish sky to pick up trees and toss them like chaff.… When the boy saw these wonders he so revered the Great Good Spirit that his breast would swell with joy and tears would fill his eyes.

  The hunting parties killed several bison along their great roads and took much meat, so much that they had to build camps and smoky fires and labor for days cutting bison flesh into strips and hanging it on pole racks over the fires to make jerky. “Someday,” Chiksika said, “you and I will take a large group of hunters out to the wide prairies west of the Wabash-se-pe for a big bison hunt. We will go and visit with our friends the Kaskaskias and the Potawatomi, and with the Shawnees who have a town at the mouth of the Wabash-se-pe. You will meet warriors and chiefs who knew our father. You will see herds of bison so great that you will think Weshemoneto made the world for th
em instead of for people. And we will hunt them from horseback, chasing alongside the herds as they run. They are so many their hooves sound like thunder, and shake the earth! There is no other hunting that is so exciting to the spirit!”

  Tecumseh’s eyes were wide. “When can we do that?”

  “Not yet,” Chiksika said. “When we go back to Chillicothe now, we are going to war in Kain-tuck-ee again.”

  They were talking beside a campfire at dusk. Their eyelids were red and dry from woodsmoke, and the smell of burnt fat and drying meat filled the cool evening air and permeated their clothes. Off in a grove beyond the camp a grouse drummed its mating message, and meadowlarks trilled in the open. Big Turtle sat near Chiksika, doing what he could to repair a damaged musket with his only tool, a knife. He had become the hunting party’s gun repairman. He could adjust bent springs, even repair thumbscrews sometimes, and make serviceable ramrods and gunstocks with his knife. A broken hammer or trigger he could do nothing about, except, sometimes by taking a part from one broken gun to repair another, and when he could not fix something he would apologize, saying that if he had the right tools, he could make new parts. Big Turtle was a man of many skills. He had no gun of his own just now; his own rifle had been taken from him by Blue Jacket and not returned. When he went hunting with Chiksika, he would use a gun belonging to some member of the party who was staying in the camp.

  Big Turtle did not look up from the flintlock he was working on when Chiksika spoke of the plan to attack Kain-tuck-ee. He seemed not to be listening; perhaps he was too absorbed to try to follow the conversation around him.

  Chiksika and the other hunters talked about the planned raids. Black Fish would lead again this spring. One place to be raided was the fort at the Kanawha-se-pe where Cornstalk had been murdered. It might be too strong a fort to destroy, but there would be an attempt to surprise it. Two Canadian officers sent by the British would go with Black Fish and help with strategy. There might even be a cannon, if one could be pulled down from Detroit in time. Black Fish intended to gather as many as five hundred warriors from all the septs. One of Black Fish’s best subchiefs, Catahecassa, Black Hoof, would be in charge of a large portion of the Chalagawtha forces. Old Moluntha, chief of the Maykujay sept, would command the warriors of his sept. The main purpose of the war party would be to go down and complete the task that Black Fish had not quite accomplished the year before: the destruction of all the forts in Kain-tuck-ee.

  Chiksika, out of respect for his beloved new foster brother Big Turtle, did not mention the forts by their names. One of them was Boone’s Fort.

  ONE DAY LATE IN THE SPRING, WHILE BLACK FISH AND HIS five hundred warriors were painting themselves and preparing their food and weapons for the raid on Kain-tuck-ee, his newest foster son assembled a rifle from parts he had hoarded as tribal gunsmith and slipped out of the village. He caught and bridled an Indian horse, led it to the edge of the woods, glancing back over his shoulder until he was hidden by foliage, then swung onto the horse’s back and kicked it into a gallop toward Kain-tuck-ee. Boone’s Fort was one hundred and sixty miles away, by his reckoning, and after his capture last winter he had memorized the return trail.

  NIGHT WAS COMING ON BEFORE HIS ABSENCE WAS NOTED, and the news was brought to Black Fish:

  “Big Turtle is gone. He stole a horse. His tracks go toward Kain-tuck-ee.”

  The chief’s jaw muscles tightened, and he bent slightly, as if he had just been struck a blow in the belly. In their deep, dark slits, his eyes glinted. Then he stood up straight. A great, warm pool of affection in his heart had just frozen into an icy pellet of hatred. The white man, even that extraordinary and esteemed one, had betrayed his word once again.

  “Big Turtle? Big Turtle?” Black Fish replied. “I know no one by that name. Do you mean that white-faced horse stealer they call Captain Boone?”

  A CROWD OF CHILDREN STOOD AROUND LOUD NOISE, LAUGHING at him. But he was used to being laughed at, and the scowl on his face was not one of hurt, but one of defiance. Only he had a Thunder-Sucker. No one else had one.

  He rolled his eyes and uttered a long string of gibberish, some of that vaguely familiar language that was thought to be Our Grandmother’s tongue, and that he should have forgotten three or four years ago but seemed still to remember.

  A few of the younger children stopped laughing. Now Loud Noise waved his left hand in front of them. On the wrist was a little bead bracelet with a copperhead’s skull hanging on it, a frail piece of bleached bone with the bracelet threaded through the eyeholes. This seemed to intimidate a few more of the children, but some of the older boys were still laughing at him. Now he raised his right hand, in which he held his Thunder-Sucker, which he claimed had great medicine.

  Loud Noise was a clumsy boy, who could hardly throw a rock without hitting himself. But he believed himself to have other powers. Most boys played at being war chiefs and great hunters, but he played at being a shaman. It made people remember their old suspicion that he might be a creature of Matchemoneto, the Great Evil Spirit.

  His Thunder-Sucker was like a leather bag between two flat pieces of wood. It was something that Chiksika had brought home from the capture of the salt makers and had given to his mother. Blue Jacket said white people used it to help in fire starting, and the name they called it was “bellows.” Loud Noise often stole it out of the wigewa and took it to use in playing shaman. Sometimes he just blew air out of it and claimed that he had captured the breath of Cyclone Person, the wind spirit. But when a storm was coming, he used it for a more spectacular ceremony. He would stand outdoors with a wild look in his eyes and point it toward the sky, and when thunder boomed he would jerk it open. Then he would say he had sucked in some thunder with it, and that he could release the thunder whenever he wanted to. A few smaller children believed him, and he could scare them or dominate them by pointing it at them and threatening to thunder them with it. Loud Noise was not the kind of boy that other children could like, but he was not one they could ignore, either.

  Now Loud Noise held the Thunder-Sucker out in front of him and cried in a shrill voice: “You will see! With my medicine I can take the poison out of the three-leaf poison plant! I can protect myself from all poisons!”

  He turned to a thick patch of poison ivy beside the trail, pointed the bellows at it, and squeezed the handles together, making a deep noise in his throat that, with the hiss from the bellows, sounded like a distant storm. Then, to show his contempt for the now harmless plant, he squatted down in it, strained, blew gas in it, and pretended to defecate. Then he tore up a handful of the leaves and wiped his bottom with them. The others were astonished.

  It was unfortunate that the strange child’s magical powers did not match his imagination. His mother and sister had to treat his bottom with many jewelweed poultices for much of that summer, and he cried almost as much as he had after he was born, and it was a long time before the people of the town stopped laughing about the medicine powers of Loud Noise.

  ONE DAY DURING THE RASPBERRY MOON AS TECUMSEH SAT under a hot blue sky scraping at a piece of split hickory, shaping a child’s bow for Loud Noise, the breeze in the trees fell still. All the birds stopped singing. A dog leaped up from where it had been lying and ran away whimpering, its tail between its legs. The edges of shadows seemed to dissolve on the ground, and though there was not a cloud in the sky, the daylight was turning a strange yellow gray, then ash gray, and darkening. People were crying out, pointing toward the sun. Heart racing with fright, Tecumseh put his hand up to shade his eyes and squinted under his palm at the sun.

  It was not round anymore!

  He leaped up and ran home. Other children were hurrying in all directions, scampering, stumbling, squealing with fear.

  Turtle Mother tried to soothe the triplets. She told them not to be afraid. It was Mukutaaweethe Keelswah, the Black Sun. It came now and then in any lifetime; it always lasted only a short time. Wise men said it happened when the moon got in front of the sun
for some reason known only to Weshemoneto.

  They were all glad but amazed when the sun was whole again, and there was not a trace of the event left in the sky. The world was as bright as ever. But in the faces of many of the gray-hairs, its gloom remained for a while. For the Black Sun, almost always in the history of the Shawnee nation, had foreshadowed misfortunes in war. And most of the men were now away at war.

  “LOOK, NOW,” TECUMSEH SAID TO LOUD NOISE. “YOU MUST keep this arm straight.” With a sigh, he took hold of his little brother’s left arm above and below the elbow and straightened it. “Now you must keep that arm straight like that while you pull the bowstring. Pull it now!”

  Loud Noise made one of his awful, mouth-twisting grimaces and tried to pull the bowstring. The bow began to wobble. His fingers on the bowstring began to tremble and spread apart, and the nock of the arrow slipped off the string and the arrow fell to the ground; by then his left arm had begun to quake, and it bent at the elbow again. Now the boy eased the tension off the bow and, making a panting sound, looked down at his arrow on the ground as if he were about to cry.

  Tecumseh sighed again in exasperation. Never had he known any person so clumsy and uncoordinated as this poor child. Tecumseh himself had been shooting a bow for three years by the time he was this age. The other two triplets could shoot the bows Tecumseh had made for them. But Loud Noise could just barely do anything that required one hand; he could throw a stick or rock, and it would usually land somewhere—not far—in front of him, but not always. Sometimes it would fall behind him or just go up and come down on his head. But anything that called for the use of both hands, like shooting a bow or kindling a fire or simply juggling two stones, seemed to be beyond his capabilities. When he had tried to use a rock sling, he had always bruised his shins or gotten the cord tangled around his arm or neck. It was as if he could not think of both hands at once, and anything he attempted usually ended in an awkward, spectacular fumble, followed by squeals or shrieks of frustration. If it had not been so pathetic, it would have been funny.