Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  The red-hair laughed. “Bridges. They are like wooden roads from one side of a river to the other. But we were talking of books.”

  “Yes! Books! Brother … Ah! What do the words in the books mean?”

  “Every book means something different. First, there is the Bible …”

  There was another word. “Bi-buh?”

  “Bible. The Bible is the greatest of all the books!”

  “Ahhh!” Tecumseh was feeling a strange excitement from hearing of all these unknown things. “Why is it greatest, this Bi-buh?”

  “Oh! Because it is the word of… God.”

  “ ‘God’?”

  Now Copper Hair was getting excited, too. “We call him Weshemoneto. The white men call their Great Good Spirit, God.”

  Tecumseh stood with his head tilted and his mouth open, absorbing all this. A few yards away, Chiksika and some of his comrades were having an equally taxing conversation with Simon Girty and the Redcoats about cannons, with much puzzlement in their faces and much head nodding. Tecumseh said to Copper Hair: “You had the word of Weshemoneto in a livre? In a, a, a book? How can this be? Tell me!”

  Copper Hair’s eyes were sparkling, and he could not keep his hands still. Something was stirring him very much. “Listen, Tecumseh,” he exclaimed. “I would like to tell you all this! But they are taking me back to Piqua Town today. They brought me here to help interpret what the British say. If you can come to Piqua Town someday, with your brother, we will talk for a long time. You ask me things no one has asked me since I have been Shawnee. I want to tell you so much that I remember!”

  Tecumseh was looking at Copper Hair now out of the side of his eye. He said cautiously: “When … when you were among the white men, did you, ah … like it?”

  “Oh, yes!” Then Copper Hair seemed to draw something down inside himself, a caution, and said: “It is better being Shawnee, of course. But … but my father, my family … oh, they were the best sort of white people.…” He seemed terribly agitated, and his eyes were intense on Tecumseh’s face. “Listen. If I tell you a secret, will you keep it? On your word?”

  “I keep all secrets told to me.”

  “I’ve so wanted to tell this to someone, anyone …” His voiced dropped to confide. “It could be dangerous if people knew it.… Oh, never mind. Maybe it is better that I keep still.…” Copper Hair looked afraid now; he was biting his lower lip, as if he should never have said any of this.

  “Brother, you do not have to say it,” Tecumseh said. “But if you want to, I will tell no one else.”

  Copper Hair looked at Tecumseh for some time, plainly, very nervous. Then he said:

  “Then I’ll trust you. I told you, my family was the best sort. None braver. None smarter. You … you have heard of the Long Knife chief called Clark?”

  Tecumseh shivered at the name. He nodded.

  “The one,” Copper Hair went on, “who captured all the British forts and caught Hamilton?”

  “Yes. We have heard much of him.”

  “Listen: I was on a journey with him when I was captured.…”

  Tecumseh was awestruck. Here was a man who had known the terrible Clark! Tecumseh had a hundred questions suddenly. But Copper Hair was whispering on:

  “It was Christmas Day of seventy-six, the last date I was ever to know of for sure.… This Clark you know of … I was with him.… Secret? Promise? Because he’s my cousin!” Copper Hair whispered this urgently.

  “Clark is your cousin!”

  “Yes! His mother is a sister of my father! We grew up together, all us cousins, all more like brothers!” Tecumseh was obviously awed. Copper Hair hurried on, as if this information had been needing to burst out of him in words: “Oh, what a man he is, cousin George! Whenever I hear of him I shiver. How I’ve wanted to speak of him, when I hear tell of what he’s done. But maybe they’d kill me if they knew … or put me up as hostage.… But he is my cousin, oh, yes. And there’s no finer a man. I just wish I could come out and brag!”

  “This Clark, you mean, is good?”

  “Good? No finer a man! He’s a long-seer … always keeps his word. And … have you ever known anybody who can talk of a thing so that you want to jump up and do it?”

  “Yes!” Tecumseh was thinking of Chiksika. And of Black Fish, especially Black Fish. Here again was this idea of the power of words, of which Black Fish had made him so aware. Even among the white men, then, there must be people like that. Tecumseh wanted to talk to this Copper Hair for days. It would take days for him to ask all the questions that had come up in his mind in these few minutes. But now Copper Hair’s name was being called by someone near the cannon. Some of the warriors from Piqua Town were calling to him and beckoning. They were on their horses.

  “I must go now, brother,” Copper Hair said.

  Of all the questions whirling in his head, Tecumseh felt he had to ask at least one before this man rode away. “Brother, what was your white man name?”

  “Ro … Rogers. Joseph Rogers.…” His eyes looked wild. “Oh, how long since that name’s been said aloud! … Listen! Come to Piqua Town, and we’ll talk! Promise!”

  “Yes! I will bring my books!”

  “You have books!” Copper Hair’s blue eyes were wide open. The warriors were calling him again. They began riding over.

  “I have two books, and I will bring them!”

  “Weh-sah, good!” Copper Hair gripped Tecumseh’s shoulder and then turned and ran toward the Peckuwe warriors.

  And Tecumseh watched him ride away, so stirred by this that he had nearly forgotten about the cannon.

  14

  CHILLICOTHE TOWN

  Summer 1780

  STAR WATCHER AND HER YOUNG BROTHERS RAN THROUGH the town with the crowd, toward the war road. They had heard the returning warriors singing and the dismal drone of the voices of captives. The hundreds came in a haze of drifting dust.

  Never in memory had so many prisoners been brought in. They came staggering into Chillicothe, four or five hundred of them, men, women, and children in rags, many naked and hurt, all gaunt and terrified. Their skin was red with sunburn and smudged with dirt and blood. They were loaded like pack animals with useful things the warriors had looted from their towns and made them carry. Many of the Redcoats and the Greencoat rangers were moving beside the prisoners, helping the warriors guide them along. Star Watcher trotted next to the great, long, noisy column of wretches, looking for her husband. At the sight of the scrawny, sooty young mothers leading and hauling their wailing children, she felt heavy with pity.

  When she found Stands Firm, riding far back in the column near the slow-moving rolling-gun, she walked alongside him, her hand on his foot in the stirrup. He told her that with the help of the Redcoats and their cannon, the warriors had captured two whole towns full of prisoners, and that they would all be taken to Detroit and sold to the Redcoat chief there. Stands Firm said it was the greatest victory ever in Kain-tuck-ee, but he did not seem very pleased about it.

  That evening, when all the hundreds of exhausted prisoners lay groaning and crying mournfully in a field ringed with guards, when the Chillicothe people had grown tired of taunting and tormenting them and staring at them, Star Watcher fed her husband and her brother Chiksika, and the family learned why this great victory seemed so joyless.

  “No one will want to go to war with this Captain Byrd again,” said Chiksika. “He has no stomach.”

  Stands Firm started telling the story of the campaign. “At first, Captain Byrd was bold. We were going to go to the Great Falling Water of the O-hi-o. With the cannon we would shoot apart the new fort built there by the Long Knife Chief Clark. Clark was said to be still out in the valley of the Missi-se-pe, and all the tribes were eager to destroy his fort at the Falling Waters.

  “But then spies came and told us that Clark himself was already at his fort. Therefore some of the chiefs—but not Black Hoof—decided it would be bad to fight there. They said the ghosts of the ancient white g
iants of Kain-tuck-ee would be against us, because the Falling Waters place is where our ancestors massacred them, as we have heard in the old songs of our people and of the Delawares.

  “I was ashamed for those chiefs. Byrd was angry at them. His general had wanted him to strike the fort at the Falling Water place. But Byrd had to go where the chiefs voted to go, as he was only helping us. And so we went into Kain-tuck-ee at the Licking River instead, and up to a new fort called Ruddell’s. There, just one ball from the cannon knocked down the gate, and the white men saw how many we were, so they came out to give up. Many warriors ran into the fort and killed about twenty people. Captain Byrd got very mad at us. He told the chiefs he would not help with his rolling-gun at any more forts if the warriors killed people who had already given up. The chiefs said to him, What did we come here for? They said, How are we to fight the other forts of Kain-tuck-ee when we have so many prisoners to guard?

  “But Captain Byrd made the chiefs promise that at the next fort the warriors would only kill white people who refused to give up. So we went. It was to a fort called Martin’s. They gave up without fighting, and so then we had still more prisoners, almost as many prisoners as we numbered ourselves. The chiefs told Captain Byrd, We must kill these many prisoners so we can go on and fight Boone’s and Harrod’s forts, as you promised we would do! But Byrd said, No, these prisoners will be taken to Detroit. We cannot strike any more forts till another time. So we had to come back, as you see.”

  Tecumseh could see Star Watcher listening very carefully to all this, saying nothing as she fed the warriors. Now Chiksika took up the story.

  “We were angry. We did not want to come back yet. But what could be done? So we killed the prisoners who were too weak to come, then we started back. Warriors were angry about all these prisoners. When they fell down or got slow, we killed them. Byrd got madder. He told his soldiers not to let us do that. So we are back, as you see. We did more than has ever been done against the Long Knives. We burned two forts and brought home five hundred prisoners for whom the British will pay us, and got much loot. But Boone’s Fort is still there, and Harrod’s, and some other new forts, and now Clark’s big fort at the Falling Water place. We have only forty scalps among eight hundred warriors, and no one is satisfied. Maybe Byrd will have glory in taking so many prisoners to Detroit. But will red men go to war with this Captain Byrd again? No! He has no stomach!”

  Star Watcher had been listening to Chiksika with her lips pressed tight shut. Now she smiled, but her eyes were sharp and were aimed straight into his.

  “I am sorry there are still Long Knife forts there,” she said. “But you know my heart, brother. You know I am glad those white women and their children are alive. They are helpless. For their lives I would thank Captain Byrd, and it sounds to my ear as if the cowards were red men, who would not go to fight their great enemy Clark, but kill mothers and children!”

  Chiksika, too surprised to answer, had to swallow her criticism with the food she was feeding him. Tecumseh, despite his adoration of his older brother, found he liked better what his sister had said.

  BLACK HOOF KEPT ONE OF THE PRISONERS AFTER BYRD WENT on to Detroit. This was a big, pleasant boy of about twelve years, a son of one of the chiefs of Ruddell’s Town. His name was Stephen Ruddell. Black Hoof adopted him into the Chalagawtha sept and named him Sinnanatha, which meant Big Fish. Black Hoof would joke about the boy, saying, “I went to Kain-tuck-ee, and there I caught this Big Fish.”

  Big Fish was a bold, good-spirited boy, and he quickly took to life in the tribe. As a white boy he had had to work most of the time, but here he could spend his days playing games and hunting. He was a good athlete, and before long he became another rival whom Tecumseh had to strive to beat.

  In the beginning, Big Fish knew no Shawnee words, but if he was shown how a game or contest was done, then he could play it well at once. One day in early autumn, Big Fish trounced Thick Water. So the boys of Chillicothe decided that this strong, active newcomer should be pitted against their champion Tecumseh in a wrestling match. Finding himself encircled by spectators and facing this sinewy, hawk-eyed Shawnee boy, Stephen Ruddell presumed that he was about to be engaged in a fistfight, as such an arrangement would have meant in a white town. He was ready. He was accustomed to winning fistfights. “All right, Chief, whenever you’re set,” he taunted. “I’m about to bust your snot horn.”

  Tecumseh, understanding none of the words, crouched with open hands and began circling, looking for an opening. Suddenly the white boy snapped out with his right fist. Tecumseh, whose reflexes were so quick he could grab a fly out of the air, caught the boy’s wrist in both hands and held him fast, protesting in Shawnee: “No! We do not strike. We wrestle.” He let go of the fist, and before he could step back to start again, the boy’s left fist shot out. Tecumseh ducked out of its way and grabbed the arm in a powerful lock.

  Now the white boy understood. He considered himself no novice at wrestling, either, and quickly broke the armlock in a single heaving motion that flung Tecumseh into the dirt. Tecumseh bounced to his feet, and the two now circled each other with mutual respect, being cheered on by the circle of watchers.

  Tecumseh and Big Fish fought in the dust for a long time, straining and sweating, groaning with the pain they inflicted on each other, before Tecumseh finally, with swiftness and surprise, threw Big Fish on his face and bent both of his arms up behind him and locked him in place. Big Fish strained until he realized it was futile, then he nodded. The spectators yipped with delight. When Tecumseh let him up, Big Fish smiled, his face so flushed and dusty that it looked the color of an Indian’s, not a white boy’s. His smiling face reminded Tecumseh of the young man named Copper Hair at Piqua Town.

  And that evening Tecumseh thought:

  Now Chiksika is here. I must ask him to ride with me to see this Copper Hair in Piqua Town. We could take the livres, the, the books, he called them, and maybe he could explain to me how they do what they do to catch Weshemoneto’s words and hold them in a book.

  Suddenly Tecumseh wanted to do that more than he wanted anything. It might be a bad thing of the white people, doing that to words. But it was certain that Tecumseh would not be able to settle his thoughts until he knew about it. Chiksika knew very well the nature of Tecumseh’s persistent curiosity, so he agreed. They would ride to Piqua Town, and they would take the books, and they would talk to this Copper Hair.

  TECUMSEH CAME AWAKE FEELING A HAND AROUND HIS ankle, the way his family members always woke each other if there was something urgent. The first thing he was aware of was that he was lying not in the family wigewa, but on the ground under bright stars. Then he remembered where he was: on the trace between Chillicothe and Piqua Town, with Chiksika. It was Chiksika’s hand on his ankle, and his voice, strained with anxiety, was saying:

  “Come look, brother. Something is wrong.”

  The tone and the words made Tecumseh’s heart quicken, and he scrambled up from his bed of leaves. “Come here,” Chiksika said. By starlight Tecumseh could see him going up toward the crest of the high meadow on whose edge they had made their little camp, and he followed him.

  The elevated clearing gave them a wide view of the vast, starry sky and the horizons all the way around. Chiksika pointed toward the south. “The sun does not rise there.”

  Above the southern horizon was a faint, reddish glow. In that direction lay Chillicothe. Chiksika and Tecumseh had left Chillicothe the day before for their journey to Piqua Town. They had traveled in a leisurely way, stopping here and there to study this beautiful land that lay between the Little Miami-se-pe and the Mad River, stopping again to hunt game for a meal, finally making an early camp halfway between the two towns and sitting up late by the campfire to talk about all matters that were on their minds, from Captain Byrd’s campaign to the strange things called books that Tecumseh had brought along. They could have gone all the way to Piqua in three hours but instead had enjoyed this lazy summer trip, a reminder
of the old, peaceful days when Chiksika had spent much of his time teaching Tecumseh.

  Tecumseh looked at the glow on the horizon, then put his hand on Chiksika’s hard arm and felt that it was quivering. Tecumseh said, “Do you think Chillicothe is on fire?”

  “We had better go back.”

  Their horses, hobbled, were a few yards away on the meadow. Tecumseh, tingling with alarm, hurried to get them while Chiksika ran down to gather their guns and bundles from the camp. In a few minutes they were riding back toward Chillicothe as fast as the darkness would allow, their minds full of dread and their hearts racing. They thought of Star Watcher and the three boys and of all the other people who were dear to them. They were less than a mile down the trace when Tecumseh said, “Listen!”

  They reined in. Somewhere to the west, some horses were running fast, several horses, going toward Piqua.

  “Should we follow them?” Tecumseh asked. “They could tell us what is wrong.”

  Chiksika paused a moment, considering this, then said, “No. They would be to Piqua before we could catch up. And maybe they are not even our people. Come!” They urged their horses on toward Chillicothe. The stars were fading now as the eastern sky grayed. The sky was still red ahead of them.

  Suddenly Chiksika raised his hand and hissed. He guided his horse toward a copse of trees left of the trace. As they rode into the cover, Tecumseh could hear from some distance down the trace the stirring sounds of many people moving: hooves, creaking sounds, low voices, now and then a shout. It sounded like a whole nation moving in the dark. It could be the Long Knife army; that was Tecumseh’s first thought. But then he heard the crying of an infant.

  “It is the People!” Chiksika said, and they rode out.

  Soon they heard Black Hoof’s deep voice, and when they were close enough to see him in the gloom, Chiksika rode alongside and Black Hoof grumbled the news.

  “The Long Knife army comes. Ten hundred or more. But-lah shows them the way, and the Long Knife Clark commands.”