Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  It was a paradise for the hunter. But, Chiksika would say, “The Shawnee lands in O-hi-o and Kain-tuck-ee used to be like this. There was more game than we could kill. Now the whitefaces are there, and the hunting is hard. You look at all the bison here and you say, These would last forever. The Sioux and Sauk and Arikara say the herds beyond the Missi-se-pe are so great sometimes that you cannot see to the other side, and you think, These could never be all gone. But, my brother, we used to think that of the animals in Kain-tuck-ee. Until the whitefaces came.”

  FOR MANY MOONS CHIKSIKA AND TECUMSEH HAD BEEN WANDERING. Since the last destruction of the Shawnee towns in O-hi-o, they had been nomads, hunters, occasionally marauders. In their hearts they longed for the beautiful towns where they had been children, but the towns were not towns anymore. Time after time they had been turned to ash heaps, upon which the patient old Black Hoof and the People again and again tried to make towns. It was too saddening to see the hundreds of charred places that had been houses, to see the little camps of married men with their women and children trying with half-broken spirits to make their country what it had been.

  Tecumseh and Chiksika, like many of the unmarried young men, had begun to drift away to other places, places farther from the white man’s advance. They had stayed at Miami towns and Kickapoo towns north and west of their old homeland. They had visited among the Potawatomies. Chiksika had taken Tecumseh on long, long rides, to hunt, to raid white men’s boats, but mostly just to see the few parts of the country where the red men could still live and hunt and range without having to be on guard against whitefaces. They had stayed in villages built in marshy river bottoms and on windy prairies. They had been the guests of the Miamis at Kekionga, of Kickapoos on the Mississinewa, of Weas on the Wabash-se-pe. They had become friends with young warriors of those nations and of the Sauk and Fox and Ottawa. They had talked and eaten with these young men beside a hundred campfires and had learned many of their words.

  They had lived a while with young women of some of those tribes, without marriage. Tecumseh’s appetite for women was powerful. These living-ins were not something they would have done in their own nation, which was still more rigid about that matter. Too, the girls of the tribes who would take up with visiting men like that were sometimes girls who had lain with traders or other white men, and there was a danger of getting diseases in the loins. Sometimes Tecumseh would lie awake in the darkness with a musky, warm girl beside him, and, though he would be full of languor and affection, there would be a whisper in his soul, an unhappy whisper, telling him he was taking too lightly something that the teachings said was sacred. Once he had risen from beside a sleeping Miami girl and slipped away from her hut to go and stay by himself beside a small brook and pray for better direction of his life, that direction which had been hinted at so often by the visions, by the Spirit Helper, by his dreams, by the sign of the green Eye of the Panther in the sky. Surely all those signs did not mean for him to expend all his strength in body pleasure.

  Thus the brothers had wandered for many moons, these brother warriors who admired each other so deeply. Big Fish had usually traveled with them, and sometimes Thick Water would find them as they passed near home and would join them. They had wandered north to the marshes and the white dunes that bordered the great lake called Mis-e-ken, and there they had walked along the sands with the roar of the surf and the stinging, sand-laden wind blowing away their words as they talked. There Tecumseh had seen tiny cliff swallows darting out of little nesting holes in the steep sand banks, nests right in the path of the strong wind of the lake, and in his wonderment at the immense space of the world, his heart had so swelled with the love of Weshemoneto that he had wept in the wind. And then later that day from the top of a high dune they had looked out and seen on the very horizon of the lake, stark against the gray clouds and gray water, a speck of white. It had puzzled him until Chiksika had realized what it was: the white cloth wings of one of the huge boats of the British. Chiksika had seen one of those once in the mouth of the Maumee-se-pe. “Soon,” he said, “we will not be able to look anywhere over land or water without seeing white men.”

  “Or even sky,” Tecumseh said.

  Wherever they had wandered, Tecumseh had been able to feel within himself something pointing toward the unsteady place in the center of the earth. When he had walked in the old Shawnee homeland, he had felt that it was far to the southwest. As he walked on the shore of the great lake called Mis-e-ken, he had felt that it was almost straight south but still far away. Now he was close to the place where the Beautiful River and the Missi-se-pe flowed together, and when he walked on this ground he felt that he was almost on top of the center of the trembling earth, as if the heart of the Great Turtle beat deep below his feet. It was not that the earth was trembling; he had not felt that since he’d arrived here. But as he stood overlooking the confluence of the two great rivers, he knew this was the center, as he had always known he would know it when he stood upon it. Now he stopped Chiksika and said to him, “Brother, here is the place I have spoken of. Down deep in the earth, down that way in the Missi-se-pe as if it were far under the water of the river, there is where it is. The place I have felt, the place of which I talked with Eagle Speaker, the Bear Walker.” He said this very calmly. Chiksika looked at him with a fearful face. “It shakes now under your feet?”

  “No. But this is the place. The message will come from the earth here.” He made a circular gesture, indicating the valley before them.

  Chiksika searched Tecumseh’s face and seemed to see something in his eyes. “Do you learn what the message says?”

  “No. It does not come yet.… Look!”

  He pointed, down across the huge confluence of waters where the two different colors of greenish yellow and yellow-brown were forever mixing. A white bird had just fluttered over their heads and flown down toward the south. Tecumseh could hear a voice as it flew, but not words. Soon the bird was too small to see. Beyond the place where it had vanished, a wisp of smoke rose over the faraway trees on the western shore of the Missi-se-pe. Down there was a town the Spaniards had built, with fortifications. Even the Spaniards, who claimed the lands on that side of the Missi-se-pe, were wary of the encroachments of the Long Knives.

  Tecumseh now stood watching the wisp of smoke for a few minutes, trying to understand what the dove meant. It was like the time it first came to him in his vision: unsaid. Chiksika stood still, waiting for him to explain something. Finally, pointing west, Tecumseh said: “In that way lies the place where our mother went, with our sept and the Thawegilas?”

  “That way. Yes. That is the way we will go to see her.”

  “She is not over there anymore,” said Tecumseh.

  “Ai! What do you say?”

  “She is not that way. She is that way.”

  The wind was blowing his hair and clothes. He swung his arm then and pointed the way the bird had gone. Far down that way lay the homeland of the Creeks, her people. This perplexed Chiksika. After the buffalo hunting, he and Tecumseh and some fellow hunters from the little Shawnee town at the mouth of the Wabash-se-pe had intended to go across the Missi-se-pe to the place where the Spaniards had given the Shawnees land to live in. Chiksika and Tecumseh had planned to find their mother there and stay for a while with her. After a long time Tecumseh said, “I think she has left the People and has gone to where she was born. It seems to me that it will be a long time before we see her again.”

  THAT EVENING AT DUSK THE BROTHERS SAT WITH THE HUNTERS by their campfire and talked about the buffalo. They would ride toward the herd tomorrow and drive them down the bluffs close to the Beautiful River, and there they would kill enough of them for the use of the hunters’ town. Women from the town had already come down in canoes from the Wabash-se-pe and had made a camp below the bluffs, where they would butcher the kill, jerk some of the flesh, and clean the hides. By doing this so close to the river, they could then take the hides and meat back up to their town easily in
the canoes, much more than could be taken overland. It was all planned.

  Now at dusk the wolves began singing. Each voice joined the song in just a slightly different key so that no two were singing quite the same, but their voices were so blended that they sounded like one wolf with many throats. It was a far, haunting song and made Tecumseh’s heart ache with a nameless yearning, a yearning to understand the tomorrows. That night he went to sleep thinking of the unseen power of this place.

  THE GROUND RUMBLED WITH HOOFBEATS AND BLURRED backward with the speed of his horse. Alongside him ran the herd: a lunging, pounding mass of coarse, shaggy, dusty, blackish-brown hair, dark horns, tiny eyes. Ahead of Tecumseh and behind him, on the fringes of the herd, rode the other hunters, whooping and yipping in a frenzy, secured to their horses’ backs by the grip of their sinewy legs. Every hunter was selecting the bison that he wanted to kill first. Some of the hunters were holding rifles, but some, like Tecumseh, had chosen to use the bow. To be able to draw a strong enough bow to drive an arrow into the deep chest of a bull bison and pierce its heart, while clinging to one’s horse in a full gallop, was a supreme test of a man’s strength and skill and courage, and a bow kill was counted as more commendable. Tecumseh had never killed a bison with an arrow before but was sure he would not fail. The hunters from the Wabash-se-pe town were accustomed to such hunting on the prairie and were masterful horsemen, and they liked to show off for their forest brethren when they came. But it was not in Tecumseh’s nature to let himself be outdone, so now he rode with furious speed, guiding his powerful mount with knee pressure and clinging like a burr to its back, riding as close to the thundering tide of beasts as any of the prairie Shawnees were doing. He had already left Chiksika far behind and was chasing the leader of the herd, a huge bull the rest of the herd was following in its panicky stampede.

  The dangers were terribly plain. If a horse fell, it and its rider would instantly be borne down by the awful momentum of the big animals and crushed and chopped to pulp by falling bodies and sharp hooves.

  Tecumseh was now ahead of all the other hunters. He yodeled with joy and dug his heels into his horse’s flank. The ground was sloping downward here, as the herd tore into the broad valley toward the mouth of the O-hi-o-se-pe. The bison were letting themselves be driven just the way the hunters intended. These men had hunted them here for many years, and such drives seldom failed to turn out just as they were meant to.

  His heart high with thrill, Tecumseh now heard a gunshot behind him, then another. Hunters back there were shooting into the herd. Now, the speed of the stampede increasing as it tore down the slope, Tecumseh began his move to cut out the lead bull. He swung leftward, moving across the front of the oncoming herd, riding headlong, hair flying. In a moment he was within five yards of the bull, and he took an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. The bull’s massive, surging shoulder, flecked with his foamy drool, drew nearer as the distance was closed by the efforts of the fine horse. The bull’s hooves threw up bits of turf even though it now looked as if he were hardly skimming the ground. Tecumseh’s heart was big with admiration for the bull. The grass flowed backward, a yellow blur in the narrowing space between predator and prey.

  Tecumseh knew that in this desperate last minute he would have to cut the bull aside out of the path of the herd before he shot it, or it would be trampled to carrion. So now he cut in behind the bull, to get on its left side. This was the most dangerous instant. If anything went wrong, he would be down in the path of a thousand hooves. He was aware that this was a greater recklessness than anything he had ever done. It was not necessary to put oneself in quite so much jeopardy to kill a bull bison. But he had selected this chief bull, and he wanted to take it right off the point of the herd, because to do so was excellence, and he was Tecumseh, the Panther-Crossing-the-Sky, and excellence was expected of him—not just by the People, but by Weshemoneto. This he had been growing to understand since his first bravery in battle, and now, here in this place over the Center, where the signs and dreams had been haunting him so strongly, here he had to show excellence.

  The bull was aware that his pursuer was now on his left hind-quarter instead of his right, so he veered to the right to try to elude him. Tecumseh urged the horse and drew alongside to force him clear out of the line of stampede. The rest of the herd, pressed together in its mass, would not be able to turn this abruptly. Tecumseh glanced back and saw their crazed eyes and flashing hooves and foam-specked forequarters. A little farther and he would have the bull cut out of their downhill path, and he could release his arrow.

  But something happened.

  Something in the tension of the speeding pursuit snapped, and Tecumseh felt the pony lurch and drop beneath him, felt himself pitching forward toward the blur of yellow-tan grass, saw the blue sky tilt before his eyes and the black wall of bison and then the blue sky again, and then he was on the ground and his left thigh snapped under the weight of his falling horse and there was a lightning flash of pain and an immense black thunder was over him and the ground was shaking. His horse was thrashing and twitching and jolting, shrieking in pain. Many things were striking Tecumseh, striking him hard, making lightning flashes in his head. The herd was running over him. He was in the dusty grass, and the earth was shaking and jolting. He heard a thousand familiar voices at once and yet recognized every one of them in the same instant. In his mind he saw villages falling to the ground and dust and smoke billowing up. He saw a great boat standing in water, piled with great white wings of cloth above it, and men among those wings, tiny men like birds in trees. He saw a stout man in a turban, with a mustache and one eye, and the man was familiar, and his name, Tecumseh somehow knew, was Tenskwatawa, He-Opens-the-Door. He also saw a white man with intense eyes and a small mouth and saw hundreds of huge-headed horsemen riding toward him, silhouetted in such brilliant yellow dust that they were like a herd of dark bison. The pain of his broken leg was all through him. He held the pa-waw-ka stone in his hand next to his heart and felt the jolts of the earth coming up from far below. In the thundering noise now he heard the deep voice of a chief he had never heard before and saw his broad, stolid face, a face with faded spots on the skin. Then the dove flew over, and then four wolves went by with the moon in their eyes. He saw himself as a boy standing at the place where he had been born, the spring near Piqua, and trees were falling around him and the spring water was flowing backward, and the bowels of the earth were rumbling and sending up jolts that jarred his teeth together. Only after the rumbling was gone did he see an enormous panther crouched on the horizon. Two rays shone out of its green eye.

  TECUMSEH WAS ON THE GROUND BY THE GREAT RIVER. THE sun was going down over the river. A woman—he thought it was Star Watcher, her back to the sunset and her face in shadow—was kneeling over him. Chiksika’s voice said something nearby, and the woman’s reply was not in Star Watcher’s voice. This was one of the women from the hunters’ town near the mouth of the Wabash-se-pe. Tecumseh smelled woodsmoke and blood and heard many people talking and fires crackling. He looked aside and saw the people butchering bison all around. Horses grazed, hobbled, on the slope. There was one great, fiery pain throbbing up from his broken thigh. It hurt more and more; the bone ends were moving; somebody was pulling his foot and making the broken bone grind and grate on itself within the meat of his thigh, and it was as if he himself were being butchered, being taken apart like all the bison lying around. Hundreds of flies were droning and buzzing. Tecumseh groaned and quaked; he tightened his throat to keep from crying out.

  It was Chiksika who was pulling his foot. The woman had her hands around Tecumseh’s thigh and was feeling it and looking at it very intently. She said:

  “There.” Then she wound some strouding cloth snug around his leg. She picked up a large piece of elm bark that had been freshly peeled off a trunk just as big around as Tecumseh’s thigh. She pried it open and set it around his thigh and let it close to its natural shape. Then with strips of hide she began tying i
t shut, binding the bark firmly so that it held his leg stiff and straight. Now Chiksika had moved up and was kneeling by Tecumseh’s shoulder, and the sunset glow was bright red on his face. Chiksika said:

  “Weshemoneto protects you. The herd trampled your horse to nothing, but you are only cut up, and this leg broken.”

  Tecumseh released a quaking sigh. In the firm sheath of the bark splint, the pain in his thigh was receding a little, and he could think and remember. “Brother,” he said, “tell me: did anyone else feel the ground shake?”

  Chiksika looked at him strangely. “The ground shakes under the tread of so many bison, and they ran over you.”

  “Then,” said Tecumseh as if to himself, “no one else felt the ground shake. I have seen more signs, brother. I do not know what they mean.”

  Chiksika was quiet for a while, a far-seeing look in his eyes as he held Tecumseh’s hand and looked toward the sunset. Finally he said, “You had a sign yesterday that you would not go to see our mother. Now that is so.” He looked down at Tecumseh’s splinted leg and said, “You will not be able to travel on with me.

  “Then,” Tecumseh replied, “if you find her, tell her I will be along someday.” He turned his head and faced the sunset. The red ball of the sun was beyond the heat and smoke of a bonfire, and its image trembled in the heatwaves. Tecumseh looked at the red sun and held his pa-waw-ka stone in his hand. He thanked Weshemoneto for sparing his life and for giving him so many important signs.