Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  And so as the winter passed into spring and summer, his need for Tecumseh grew to be as strong as it had been when in his boyhood he had trailed him everywhere. And to his great relief, Tecumseh never insisted that he bathe in the icy river.

  THE SMELL OF BAKING FILLED THE WARM AIR AS THE BREAD Dance ceremonies began.

  Twelve women, the selected cooks, sat in a circle in a lodge. Star Watcher was one of them. In the center of the floor lay a hoop made of a strip of split white oak. This hoop was the Round of the World, the Circle of Time. In the center of the hoop lay a leather ball, made of two pieces of hide sewn together, stuffed tight with deer hair.

  One by one the cooks rose and knelt by the hoop and tied little packets of seeds along half of the circumference of the hoop—the female half. The seeds were of red corn, white corn, large squash, small squash, brown beans, red beans, melon, cucumber, and pumpkin. These seeds were prayer offerings to Our Grandmother the Creator for abundant crops. The women smiled and sometimes hummed happily as they made these offerings. Our Grandmother liked prayers to be sincere but not solemn, because she liked the People to be happy. The packet Star Watcher tied on was the white corn. These were most important seeds, being the corn used for Indian flour.

  Then the cooks left the lodge and went away to the earthen ovens outside to finish baking the ceremonial bread, ninety small breads and three large ones.

  Twelve men, the selected hunters, filed into the lodge. They arranged themselves around the hoop. They tied on the male side of the hoop small patches of skunk fur, raccoon fur, and deer hair, and Stands Firm, now recovered from his wounds, tied on a turkey feather. These were the offerings for plentiful game.

  When the sacred hoop was thus prepared, it was taken by a very old woman and held over the shoulders of the man who would be the leader of the Bread Dance and the other dancing after the ball game. He carried the hoop to a tree at the edge of the stomp ground. There, with everyone watching, he hung it by a thong from a limb of the tree. It would be left there and never bothered again. Sometimes a person looking through the hoop could see the tomorrows.

  No woman who was impure with her bleeding moon, no man who was impure from drinking liquor in the last four days, could attend the ceremony. For this latter reason, Loud Noise was not on the ceremonial ground, and he was sulking in his lodge when he heard the cheering in the town and knew the ball game was about to start. He was disgusted with himself, and he knew that Tecumseh was disgusted with him.

  ALL THE HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ON AND AROUND THE BALL game field were concentrating on the leather ball, which the game starter held high above his head in one hand.

  Tecumseh had won the position of leader of the men’s team, by tossing a small hickory hoop over the top of a sapling pole twenty feet high. The women’s team was led by the young Peckuwe woman named She-Is-Favored. It was at this time that Tecumseh first became fully aware of this graceful young woman, although Star Watcher once had pointed her out to him as one who was thought to have defended herself against Loud Noise’s drunken lust two summers ago.

  This girl now stood opposite Tecumseh in the middle of the ball field, an arm’s length from him, like himself in a half crouch waiting for the ball to be tossed into the air above them. All the women fit to play, young and old, were massed behind her, ready to snatch the leather ball if she could bat it to them, and behind Tecumseh were all the men, waiting for him to bat it into their midst. The men were confident that they would have the first chance at the ball, because Tecumseh was so quick he could catch flies out of the air.

  It was a moment of tense excitement, this pause before the frenzy of action. All the bets—scarves, bracelets, mirrors, paint bags, and a hundred other treasures—hung colorful and glittering on a pole at the edge of the game field.

  But the biggest stake of the game was the wood gathering. The side that lost would have to gather all the bonfire wood for the days and nights of the ceremonial, a very big task, and they would have to do it cheerfully, because Our Grandmother liked everything in the ceremony to be cheerful. Spectators stood all around the grassy field, almost silent, holding their breath for the moment of the jump. It was a time for full concentration, and Tecumseh had no leisure to study the look of the girl, but in this instant he was aware that he was next to an uncommon presence; he could feel the emanations of her vitality. Her body, stripped down for the game to a pair of short aprons, before and behind, was deep-chested and lean, and her lithe muscles were delineated under the oiled, tawny skin. He was aware too of the boldness of her eyes; here was a girl who considered herself second to no one. And despite the tension of the moment, she was smiling with confidence. She and Tecumseh, and everyone else, were watching the ball in the game starter’s hand. The ball was the size of two fists held together. Just as it had been the center of the sacred hoop, it seemed the center of their world now. Tecumseh looked at the brown leather ball against the blue sky, and at the game starter’s hand, watching for that first tiny tensing of muscles that would precede the throw. The jump was crucially important in a man-woman game, because the men had to propel the ball strictly by kicking or batting it, while the women were permitted to carry it and to pass it to each other by hand.

  The game starter’s hand shot up, and the ball turned in the air ten feet up. Tecumseh sprang straight up, right hand outstretched for it. He saw her hand coming up against the blue sky, too, and her torso smacked against his, knocking him off his aim, and she flipped the ball in among the women. And as the crowd’s cheer burst over the field, an older woman caught the ball and with powerful legs bounded straight toward the center of the men’s team, with three quick young women in front of her to break a path. In a moment all the players were storming toward the men’s goalposts. Shrieks of joy came from the women’s throats as they saw which way the rush was heading.

  Tecumseh, astonished that the toss had been taken from him, was at once bounding like a buck after the ball carrier, even hurdling over those who blocked his way. The men were yelling to each other and trying to plow in through the guards and knock the ball from the woman’s hand, and men and women were colliding and falling all over each other. Ten paces from the men’s goalposts, Seekabo managed to fight his way through the defense and smack the ball out of her hand. There was another mass of collisions as the players veered and milled about, and the ball tumbled on the grass. A few on both teams were knocked silly when their heads banged together as they dove for the ball. At once Tecumseh was at the tumbling ball and gave it a mighty kick back toward the other end of the field. But it was not in the air ten feet before She-Is-Favored had sprung into its way and caught it in her left hand, and she was sweeping around the edge of the milling players with the bounding steps of a doe, carrying it again toward the men’s goalposts. The field was only seventy-five paces long, and she had less than half that distance to go, and in the duration of two breaths this fleet young woman had darted around the chaotic mass of wheeling, falling, screaming players and pitched the ball past the bewildered goalkeeper into the space between the men’s goalposts. A shrill cry of triumph went up from all the women both on and around the field, and She-Is-Favored sprang up and down on her toes, laughing, thrusting her fists over her head. The men were laughing ruefully but with admiration. The scorekeeper at the edge of the field stuck a sharpened wooden peg into the ground on the women’s side of the line drawn before him on the ground.

  They went back toward the center of the field. Tecumseh whispered something to Seekabo and Thick Water as they took their places. The game starter held up the ball again. She-Is-Favored crouched to spring and gave Tecumseh a big, triumphant smile. He smiled back at her and said, “Weh-sah!”

  The ball shot up. Again as they leaped she slammed her flank against him. But Tecumseh was ready for the impact this time and compensated for it, and he slapped the ball out of the air straight to the place where Seekabo stood. And the moment Tecumseh touched the ground he sprinted toward the women’s goalposts,
bowling girls and women over as he went. When he was through the mass of them, he looked back and up and, as he had anticipated, saw the ball flipping through the air toward him from Seekabo’s powerful kick. Tecumseh sprinted to it as it fell, in the corner of his eye seeing the women now stampeding toward him like a herd, all bobbling breasts and shrieking throats. The moment it touched the ground he caught it with a running kick of his right foot and sent it arcing toward their goalposts and bounded after it. The ball tumbled to a stop ten paces short of their goal, and as he sped after it he was spacing the strides so that his right foot would be already moving to kick it the instant he was upon it; the women were at his back now, and he would not have an instant to spare. He felt fingers touch him and slide off his oiled skin; he felt feet kicking at his legs; he even felt a hard tug at his midsection: some pursuing woman had grabbed the flying tail of his breechcloth and was trying to hold him back. Bounding forward even harder, he felt the waistband break, and the garment came off in the woman’s grip. His stride was not broken, though, and his foot caught the ball with a thud and propelled it between the goalposts just as half a dozen women smashed into him from behind and bowled him over, tumbling upon him.

  When at last he had squirmed out from under them, stark naked, bleeding from both knees and his nose, his head ringing, players and spectators alike were in a frenzy of cheering and hilarity. This was one of the funniest things they had ever seen in a ball game. Everyone was overjoyed, knowing that Our Grandmother and her grandson Rounded-Side, in whose honor the game was always played, would be wonderfully amused, and that being so pleased, they would bestow good things upon the People. Laughing so hard that he could barely see what he was doing, the scorekeeper now stuck a peg in the ground on the men’s side of the line, while the woman who had jerked Tecumseh’s loincloth off handed it to him. It was She-Is-Favored, and she was laughing harder than anyone else, with a raucous, naughty throatiness in her laughter. Seekabo and Big Fish were hooting and pointing, almost doubled over with hilarity, as Tecumseh tied his cloth back on. He himself was laughing breathlessly. He was as amused by the spectacle he had presented as he was exultant about the incredible goal kicking he and Seekabo had done. Never in anyone’s memory of the games had a score ever been kicked in so quickly and surely as that, which made the comedy of it even more wonderful. And when Tecumseh and She-Is-Favored faced each other at the center line for the next start, and their eyes met for one instant, there was something crackling in the air between them, not just the fiery respect of formidable competitors, but something like the tense attraction of lightning for the thing it is about to strike. The game ended nearly an hour later when the men, scratched, aching, and exhausted, achieved the winning score of twelve pegs. But the women were only one peg behind, and their champion was the amazing She-Is-Favored. Standing before Tecumseh, smudged with dirt and sweat, breathing hard, bruised on her ribs, grass-stained on her knees, one eye swelling shut from its contact with somebody’s elbow, she smiled at him with bloodied lips and said boldly:

  “We will play again. This is not the last for us.”

  And Tecumseh thought: How rare this woman is, and bright and bold. She could be a woman chief such as we have not seen since Tall Soldier Woman.

  She could be another great gift to the People.

  But for the rest of this day she would be one of the wood gatherers.

  21

  AT THE HEAD OF THE MAUMEE-SE-PE

  October 1791

  AT DAWN THE SINGER, SITTING AT THE EDGE OF THE STOMP Ground between the Second Singer and the Third Singer, facing south with the water drum between his knees, dipped his wet finger into red pigment and began to draw the Four Winds on the wet hide drumhead. Inside the hollowed log of the drum was a small piece of charcoal in a small quantity of water. These represented Fire and Water, the drum itself the Earth. In a continuous line, without lifting his finger, the Singer started at the south and drew the line in a circle along the edge of the drumhead all the way around the perimeter and back to the south, then continued another quarter circle until at the east, then straight across to west, made another quarter circle to south again, and finally drew his finger toward him all the way across to end at north.

  A quarter of a mile away, in a glade beyond the village, Tecumseh and some of his warriors, painted for war and dressed in full regalia, knelt around the hide-wrapped War Bundle and watched as the bundle keeper untied the thongs. Tecumseh trembled as the sacred contents were dimly revealed. Even at arm’s length from it, he could feel its power, like a vibration, and hear, though not through his ears but in his head, the hum of its being. A red-bird had started to sing near the edge of the glade, but when the wrapping of the bundle was laid open on the grass, the bird fell silent.

  Some of the small parcels inside the bundle were the original Mesawmi, gifts from the Creator, and were set aside. One of these Tecumseh knew to be full of the flesh of the Great Horned Serpent, still fresh and bloody even though it had been put in the bundle in the Ancient Time. But for the war dance on this day, certain sacred relics were to be worn and carried by the Kispoko warriors. The war for which the nations were preparing now would be the greatest resistance ever made against the whites.

  The white chief Washington had sent still another army toward the Shawnee lands, exactly as Black Hoof had prophesied. This, according to the spies, was a well-trained army mostly made up of Blue-Coat soldiers, not just the woodsmen and farmers who usually took up arms to invade the towns and destroy them, but real soldiers, who obeyed their commanders and whose duty it was to die fighting rather than run away. With them were coming many cannons.

  The soldiers’ chief was another famous general from the American war against the British, a very important man who was not only a war chief, but the governor of all the vast O-hi-o land the whites had so far taken from the tribes. This governor-chief’s name was St. Clair, and he was expected to prove himself a wiser and braver man than Harmar, for the chief Washington certainly would not send one cowardly fool to avenge the failure of another. Since the spring of this year, Tecumseh and other warriors scouting the Beautiful River had watched army boats full of supplies and soldiers come down to St. Clair’s huge new fort, called Fort Washington, at the big new white men’s town called Cincinnati, which in a few short years had sprung up opposite the mouth of the Licking River. Hardly a day had passed since the spring without some sign of the gathering war clouds. And the tribes, understanding this fully, were preparing themselves with urgency.

  Chosen to lead the united tribes was the same great war chief who had defeated Harmar: Little Turtle of the Miamis. Second under him would be Blue Jacket of the Shawnees. Allied with them were the Delawares under Chief Pipe and Breaker-in-Pieces, the Wyandots under Tarhe the Crane, the Weas and Mohawks led by White Loon. Warriors and chieftains also from the Kickapoo, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Piankeshaw, and Mingo tribes had come to fight. The Indian towns where the Auglaize flowed into the Maumee-se-pe were like anthills, swarming with the three thousand warriors who had gathered. For weeks there had been councils to plan the defense, to arrange for the feeding and arming of this huge concentration of warriors. The British agents McKee and Elliott worked night and day to obtain enough powder and lead and knives and meat and flour to supply so many.

  This biggest war would require all of Weshemoneto’s powers as well as the special powers of the sacred War Bundles. The bundle keeper now lifted out an old, old tomahawk and gave it to Tecumseh. It had a dark, slender wooden handle a foot long. Its stone head was shaped like a trefoil leaflet. Then he unwrapped four clusters of long plumes, made of split feathers. Tecumseh was to carry the sacred old tomahawk in the war dance and to wear one of the plume ornaments, which were made from the feathers of the Thunderbirds.

  In his hand the old tomahawk was warm, like his pa-waw-ka stone, and, like it, emanated force, which he could feel flowing into his arm.

  Now Tecumseh attached the plumes to a bone tube socket on the crown of h
is roach headdress. The roach was like a redbird’s crest, made of two erect fringes of tufted, red-dyed animal hair, running from his brow down to the middle of his back. Usually only one feather, an eagle’s feather, was worn in the socket at the crown. But now as Tecumseh and his three selected Kispokos mounted their decorated horses, the elaborate clusters of Thunderbird plumes bobbed with their movements. Then they rode two abreast toward the Stomp Ground, where the water drum was already sounding its deep, reverberating announcement of their approach.

  Four times the warriors rode around the ceremonial ground, their weapons held upright, the deer-hoof rattles and silver bells on their legs chattering and jingling as the horses trotted along the edge of the crowd. Tecumseh held the sacred tomahawk high. The people were standing in the chilly morning air all along their route, watching them, silent, as the sun rose and touched the treetops, where the last red-and-yellow leaves still hung against the clear sky. As he rounded a quadrant of the Stomp Ground, he saw She-Is-Favored standing in the crowd looking at him. Her eyes looked sleepy, as if she had only just gotten up from bed, and she smiled at him as he rode by. His impulse was to smile at her, but the feeling from the ancient tomahawk kept him solemn.

  The column of warriors now halted and dismounted, and their horses were led away by boys. The people parted to make a way for the warriors, and they walked two by two into the grassy space of the Stomp Ground. Each warrior’s face was painted with red lines across the temples and blue dots between the lines. Tecumseh led them to the middle of the ground, where a post stood, painted with blood-red stripes. The warriors formed a semicircle here, facing the Singer. When they were thus stationed, the drum stopped and the warriors gave one tremolo cry.

  Now the drumbeats began, a hard beat, three softer, repeated, repeated; the helpers beside the Singer joined his tempo, one with a tortoise shell rattle full of pebbles, the other with a small silver bell. The Singer began his chant.