Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  There is not much time left, they said in their councils. We must go and hear him, and learn how to be saved!

  27

  PROPHET’S TOWN AT GREENVILLE

  Spring 1807

  THICK WATER WENT AWAY TO THE WYANDOT TOWN NEAR the end of Lake Erie after the last snow, to get his young woman and bring her to the Prophet’s town.

  Star Watcher was out on the edge of town, with Tecumseh’s son Cat Pouncing, digging with a mattock to gather sassafras root. When She-Is-Favored had died in an epidemic in her town, Tecumseh had gone to get his son and bring him to his own town. Naturally much of the boy’s care and upbringing had been taken over by Star Watcher, and the boy became as close to her as if she were his real mother instead of his aunt. The boy, now approaching his ninth summer, was a supple, tall, healthy child, beautiful of face, shy, and polite. Tecumseh would look at the boy and wonder why he had in him the fire of neither parent. When Tecumseh had time from his duties in the busy, crowded holy town, he would try to teach him some of the hundreds of tricks and secrets of hunting. The boy learned well but seemed to have no spring-forward of his own. He seemed to be the kind who could keep up but never darted ahead or lunged forward. But the demands of the village and its endless hundreds of pilgrims did not leave many opportunities for teaching the boy or inspiring his energies. The lad seemed content to follow his aunt around and help her gather sassafras or cattail or red sunflower root.

  Now Star Watcher looked up from the black earth and the pungent orange roots where she was digging and saw the tall figure of Thick Water coming up the road on a small horse, the warrior’s legs so long his feet brushed the grass. Behind him rode a woman, on a pony that was also pulling a travois. Star Watcher straightened up, slowly; she was nearly half a hundred now, and though she was as strong and healthy as a young man, she was usually tired in the back and feet because of her ceaseless labors for the holy town. She went out waving and smiling toward the road to greet the couple.

  She had not known what kind of a woman to expect, and as she drew near she could scarcely believe the beauty of the young woman. Thick Water was not the sort of a man who would make women’s hearts race, as was Tecumseh, nor was he even a chieftain, but somehow he had won for himself a woman of extraordinary comeliness and physical grace.

  When they went into the town, Shawnee warriors who had known Thick Water since boyhood looked intently at him as if trying to see if there might be something special in him that they had never noticed before. All they could presume was that this spectacular Wyandot maiden liked a big man, for Thick Water was certainly big. Or maybe she had presumed that he was very important because of his closeness to the Shawnee prophet and the chief. But it was plain that she adored Thick Water, and after a few days in the town, staying in the great House of the Stranger where the pilgrims were lodged, she was serene and happy and full of the good religious fervor of the place and was eager to be married.

  The wedding was performed by Open Door in the old way, and Tecumseh was deeply moved as he saw his dedicated bodyguard standing, as he himself had just ten years before, with a most beautiful bride, holding the symbolic deerhide across their shoulders. And Tecumseh thought:

  I do not want this to end for him as it did for me. So he summoned Thick Water to talk with him a few days after the wedding. He said, “My brother, I see great happiness on your face.”

  “That is true.” Thick Water’s face was glowing.

  “Your wife is good to you and to others?”

  Thick Water nodded, his eyes full of wonder at his own good fortune. So Tecumseh said then, “Brother, you are one of the very good ones of our People, and you have given me many years of your life. I wish your happiness to continue, and pray that your marriage will be fruitful with many beautiful and happy children. Because I wish that, I want to tell you something I think about marriage.” He was remembering his own brief and troubled marriage to She-Is-Favored, who had been this beautiful a woman to look at, and he said, “To be a good husband, and a father and teacher to his sons, and a bringer of meat and hides, is much for a man to do. It is hard for him to do something else besides. He must be near when his family needs him.”

  “Yes.”

  “That is why I want to advise you to stay by your wife. You have traveled much of this land being my friend. If you tried to go on with me as you have done, you could not be the best sort of husband, for the work I have ahead of me will pull me along many roads, for many seasons, maybe for the rest of my days. I have been given this to do, and because of it, I was not meant to be a husband.

  “A man should be all he can. You are a kind of man who would probably soon become a subchief or a chief of a town, if you ever stayed in a town. You should …”

  He saw the alarm dawning on Thick Water’s face, and the tall warrior quickly protested: “Wait! I respect your advice, and always do what you ask. But please do not forbid me to go on as I have with you. It is my duty! I have seen that it is!”

  “To have you with me is good,” Tecumseh assured him. “But as you know I have others, enough others, who choose to go with me and watch my back for me. They do not have beautiful and kindly wives to provide for, or children to teach. Your wife would not understand. You have placed the cape across her shoulders, and drawn her to you, and that is your promise to protect her and be by her side.”

  “No! She understands already! I have told her what my duty is, and of what you have to do, and the years it may take. She knows this!” Thick Water’s eyes pleaded.

  “She knew this before she said yes to marriage?”

  “Before I brought her here. Yes.”

  “Brother, as you know, a chief cannot forbid a man from doing what he feels is right, but can only request and advise. If you go where I go and guard my back, I will be glad you are there.

  “But I ask you: pay attention to how your wife acts. And if her eyes start to tell you that you are not a good husband, be wise enough to stop traveling and stay with her.”

  THE TOWN OF THE SHAWNEE PROPHET HAD BECOME LIKE A great hive, swarming with people whose prayer chants could be heard droning among the trees from a mile away. The road leading down the grassy plain to the wooded point where the village lay between converging creeks was a road wide and hard-packed from the passage of thousands of hooves and moccasins. Always there were people on this road coming or going, usually in tribal groups. Never had so many kinds of dress and decoration been seen in one town—tattoos, mussel-shell earbobs, badger skins, bison-horn hats, seashell wampum, eagle-feather bonnets, moose-hide moccasins. Never had so many languages been heard in one place. Sometimes the Prophet’s words had to be translated through four or five tongues before they could be understood by a particular band from far away, and even then it would have to be aided by hand language. But everyone had patience and paid the greatest attention. Weshemoneto could not fail to make his words understood.

  Many of the people were hungry when they arrived and remained hungry all the time they were there. Though the land was rich and the villagers worked hard and cheerfully to raise enough food, and the hunters ranged far for meat, there was scarcely enough at any time to feed this multitude more than a few bites a day. If they had not been fed such rich spiritual food as they received, their empty stomachs would have caused serious trouble. But most were so enraptured by the hope and brotherhood and the palpable presence of the Great Good Spirit that they were little interested in food for their physical bodies. Their bodies were light and thin, and their souls were afloat on rapture. Open Door encouraged fasting, of course.

  Still, the Prophet was not such a fool as to believe that his children could subsist on his words and inspiration alone, so he and Tecumseh, and their hunters, and in particular the women of the town, exercised every resource to obtain and provide food. When garden crops and corn were not ready for harvest, the women and their children prayed early in the morning, then spent their days foraging and gathering in the woods and meadows and botto
mlands for miles around, bringing in roots, berries, wild greens, tubers, bird eggs, milkweed, seeds, even the inner bark of elm—all of the many things they knew were nutritious or just filling. All fished the river and the creeks. Boys shot or made snares for anything that walked, climbed, or flew. Families shared their meager rations with the endless procession of sojourners and felt happy because they believed they were helping them along the Good Way. Always a generous people, the Shawnees in this holy town were now selfless to the point of sacrifice. Even if they had themselves eaten no more than a spoonful of succotash in a day, they would rush out to greet and embrace another new band of hungry Menominees or Potawatomis coming up the road.

  Now, as Star Watcher and Cat Pouncing were returning to the town, carrying between them a blanket full of foraged roots, milkweed flowers, and watercress, they saw three white men riding along the beaten road, all dressed in black coats and hats, leading a laden packhorse. They were skinny, hunched men, who in their black garb looked like buzzards on horseback.

  Cat Pouncing, chilled by the sight of them, looked as if he might run back into the woods. “No, stay,” Star Watcher soothed him. “Look, they have no weapons!”

  This was most surprising: unarmed white men riding straight toward a large Indian town. The white men reined in their horses for a minute to gaze across the creek at the great rotting pile of Fort Greenville’s blockhouse, then rode on toward the droning village. Warriors came trotting out; there was sign language, and then the warriors led them into town.

  “Come,” Star Watcher said, “let us see who these strange people are. Maybe they are traders, with their goods on that horse. Or what if they are spies?”

  They did prove to be spies—but of an open, welcome sort. They were Jesus worshipers, Open Door explained to the People in council before that evening’s prayers, but a good sort of Jesus worshipers that he had known before. They did no violence to any red men. They found inspiration in a kind of dancing. They were called Shakers. They had come to look at the holy town and had brought some seed for the town’s fields and gardens. They were, said Open Door, the one kind of white men who were welcome here. “Love them,” he cried, “and show them how joyful and peaceful we are in this blessed place!”

  Star Watcher wondered what Tecumseh would think, if he were here, about white men being in the holy town, watching.

  JAMES GALLOWAY TOOK THE PIPE TOMAHAWK FROM TECUMSEH and held it across both his palms, admiring its beautiful craftsmanship and decoration. Tecumseh had brought it to him as a gift, saying that it would be the pipe they should smoke together whenever they met Galloway felt quite solemn about this gift. Nearby sat Rebekah, shaking her head slowly and looking down in disbelief at the treasure Tecumseh had brought to her: thirty delicately tooled little brooches of pure silver. He had brought gifts for the rest of the family, too, but this wealth of silver ornaments, he had explained, were for all the time she had spent helping him with the language and the reading and writing. But Rebekah in her own secret mind fancied that they were a love gift. She wanted to believe they were, and the tenderness in his beautiful eyes as he gave them to her had made her sure. She kept glancing between the silver and Tecumseh, her heart in a turmoil.

  Rebekah Galloway was certain that this intriguing and stimulating man wanted to marry her. This was how Indian suitors announced their intentions, she had heard: by bringing very valuable gifts. And the pipe with her father … Oh, there was no doubt of it.

  She wanted him. Oh, she wanted him!

  But he was of another race! Her father was becoming one of the leading men in this growing part of the state. He was enjoying the highest form of respectability. He was important in church.

  And though he liked and admired their guest Tecumseh as much as most any man he knew, surely he would be aghast at the thought that this chief wanted his daughter!

  She could never live in an Indian village, of course. Now as she gazed at the soft sheen of the silver, she envisioned a hut with a fire in the center, a pallet on the floor covered with animal hides, naked children squatting around the smoky fire eating half-raw meat with their fingers, drums beating outside, and herself there pounding corn, slowly forgetting the joys of reading and writing.…

  No. If by the wildest vicissitudes there could chance to be a marriage between Tecumseh and herself, he would have to adopt the dress and ways of a white man. After all, with his qualities, could he not be a remarkable man in any society? There were Indians in Ohio now who wore suits and hats and raised livestock. Surely Tecumseh could do that, and do better at it, too.

  But he was of a different color! Wouldn’t that bring shame to her father in the eyes of his fellow citizens? She had heard travelers here talk contemptuously of “squawmen,” who were white men who had married Indian women. And treated most contemptuously were those white women who in captivity had married Indian men, then had been returned to white society in prisoner exchanges. If she married a red man of her own free will, what would her father’s and mother’s associates think of them then? Especially those in the church? They would be scandalized!

  But she wanted Tecumseh. Oh, how she wanted him!

  She had spent so many of her lonely hours in the past year remembering how Tecumseh looked, how his voice sounded, even how he smelled. And sometimes in bed at night, remembering him, she had sighed and tossed, making the cornshuck mattress rustle until her mother’s voice would come out of the dark from behind the privacy curtain: “Becky? Are y’all right, dear?”

  “I’m hot,” she had whimpered, throwing off the covers, then lying there feeling the air on her sweat-damp nightdress. Once she had pulled it up around her waist and had lain there in the dark that way, growing excited in the loins, until she had remembered that God could see everything, even in the dark, and had covered herself, heartsick with frustration and shame.

  She looked up from her silver at him, gazing long and wistfully, seeing his white-toothed mouth as he smiled.

  Almost with reverence, her father now lit the silver-trimmed tomahawk with a coal from the hearth. He and Tecumseh then shared the pipe for a while, and then they resumed old conversations as if they had been together only yesterday, though it had been more than a year.

  From time to time Galloway would notice a strange, droll expression on the chief’s face, as if he were trying to keep himself from laughing. Finally Tecumseh said:

  “Your promise was good, my friend Ga-lo-weh.”

  “My promise?”

  “Yes. The Black Sun was when you promised it to be.”

  “Oh, yes! The eclipse! You saw it, then, did ye?”

  “As I told you I would do. I stood outside and saw it come. I was eager, and I thanked you in my heart.” He was still trying to swallow his smile.

  “Don’t thank me.” Galloway chuckled, leaning back in his chair, which creaked under his strong, heavy body. “Thank G … the, the Creator.”

  “That I did, too, Ga-lo-weh.” Now Tecumseh leaned back, too, from his customary erect perch on the front of the chair seat, and laughed loudly. How he wanted to tell Ga-lo-weh the magnificent joke about Governor Harrison’s taunt and Open Door’s use of the Black Sun! But of course he could not.

  Galloway was bursting to talk about something that had been the topic on the frontier for months. “Chief,” he said, “did ye know that the Corps of Discovery came back alive? That they’d got all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and home safe?”

  “Ah. The Captain Clark and the other. Yes.” He had heard things about this from many sources—from bands arriving from the west, from Girty, from British traders and agents out of Canada. It was bad news for the red man. But of course he could not say that to Ga-lo-weh, either.

  “Cap’n Clark aims to set up a fur trading company in St. Louis, so I’ve heard,” said Galloway. “He claims there’s so much beaver and otter and mink out there, it keeps you hoppin’ to empty your traps. And on the far side of the mountains, seals and sea otters, the finest fur in the
world, bar none. Why, that could just about put Britain out of the fur business on this continent.…” He paused, remembering the long association between the Shawnees and the English.

  Tecumseh said nothing about this yet, only nodded. What had troubled him most deeply was what the western chiefs had told him: that the Long Knife Captains Lewis and Clark had gone peacefully all the way to the Western Sea and back, making strong friendships with tribes that had never been exposed to Americans before, building their trust and making them eager for trade. Some of the chiefs from far up the Missouri-se-pe were traveling to Washington to see the white chief Jefferson. Tecumseh wanted to catch these naive fools and warn them of the treacherous ways of white men. Now that Americans had made a white man’s trail out there, hundreds of hundreds of hundreds more would rush up that trail and fill up that country and kill the game, even the bison, who were so many that they made thunder when they ran. Tecumseh no longer had any delusions about limitless space and inexhaustible game. The white men, he believed now, were capable of overrunning all the land in the world and making farms out of it. So to him, the news of the success of the explorers was the worst possible news, enough even to overshadow the good thing that had happened about the Black Sun. There had also been another American journey, almost as ominous; another American army captain named Pike had explored all the way up to the beginning of the Missi-se-pe, and he had reported the richness of land and the plentiful fur animals up there, which would soon mean the ruin of another quarter of the red man’s world.

  So all Tecumseh could say, out of the sense of foreboding these explorers had created in him, was, “Those captains were strong. Their father Jefferson must be proud.”

  “Aye, is he ever! What I hear is, he’s making Cap’n Lewis governor of the whole Louisiana Territory, and Clark the Indian agent and militia commander. Now, I don’t know Lewis, but that Clark lad’s the spirit ‘n’ image of his brother, the best soldier I ever served under.…” He stopped, seeing in Tecumseh’s face that all this talk was anything but delightful. Sometimes with his friend he simply forgot that he was talking to a red chief, who had reasons aplenty for seeing things otherwise. He saw a hardness in Tecumseh’s face and asked, “What’s wrong, my friend?”