Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  And when, in the Hard Moon, Withered Hand and his warriors rode homeward, he left Open Door with an invitation:

  “On the Wabash-se-pe, where the Tippecanoe flows into it, there is a valley so rich and pleasant that tribes have been living in it since the Ancient Times. It is sheltered from the strong winds off the prairies, and it is far from Fort Wayne and far from Vincennes. It is in the center of the Indian lands. My own ancestors were in that part of the valley for many years. You should move to that place and make your holy town there.” He told the Prophet that it would be especially easy to move there, to carry everything by raft and canoe. Not far north of Greenville rose the headwaters of the Mississinewa. One could float down the Mississinewa to the place where it flowed into the Wabash-se-pe, then down the Wabash-se-pe a little farther, and there the Tippecanoe flowed in, and there was the place. It was not far above Weatanon, the old French trading post and the home of the Wea tribe of the Miami nation.

  Tecumseh had seen the place often. He remembered the wide, fertile bottomlands, the wooded bluffs rising to the prairies above. “Yes,” Tecumseh told his brother, “he speaks true. It is a good place.”

  And after Withered Hand had ridden away with his warriors into the wet, leafless woods, Open Door slept a night and told Tecumseh the next day:

  “I dreamed. Weshemoneto spoke and said that I should lead our people to the Tippecanoe on the Wabash-se-pe, when the ice breaks in the springtime.”

  “Good,” Tecumseh said. “I was confident that the sign would come.” He smiled. It was always good to let Open Door think an idea was his own, for only then would he dedicate himself to it.

  28

  NEAR OLD CHILLICOTHE

  July 1809

  TECUMSEH AND THICK WATER LOOKED AT EACH OTHER with pain and sadness in their faces when they gazed down from the bluff over the site of the old Shawnee town. There were square houses and dirt roads in every part of the valley. Fields were separated from each other by great, shaggy windrows of rotting brush and stumps. In sloping places, eroded bare earth showed like gashes through the weeds and scrub. Giant hardwood trees, their bark girdled by the settlers long ago, stood gray, rotting from the top, or lay broken, the cornrows plowed around them. Smoke rose from brushpiles and chimneys everywhere in the valley. Pigs wandered all about, dogs barked from horizon to horizon. The corn was not very tall and looked parched and spindly in the dusty fields. Brambles and tall horseweeds choked every unplowed corner.

  Tecumseh urged his horse forward and led his five bodyguards down the slope toward the river. They rode in among the sycamores and willows and dismounted at the old campsite not far from Ga-lo-weh’s house. Much had happened in the last two years to keep Tecumseh from coming back to face the troubles he had made here. The holy town had been moved to the place on the Tippecanoe; Open Door had gone to meet Harrison in Vincennes and, it seemed, had at last convinced him of the harmless and strictly religious nature of his following.

  A fine holy town had been built on the north bank of the Wabash-se-pe, and it was thronging with worshipers. In the same time, Tecumseh had ridden hundreds of miles in every direction with his retinue of splendid young warriors, spreading his fervent message of intertribal unity. He was now returning from deep in the south, and the road once again had brought him to this place of memories. In his breast he was agitated as he had not been for a long time.

  Tecumseh advised his bodyguards to be peaceable and polite if any of the white settlers of the vicinity approached them, and then he set out on foot toward Ga-lo-weh’s house.

  He looked at the place on the path where they had paused in such confusion, and it was like stooping in the vanishing ruins of his childhood home: so much had happened there that it seemed wrong that there was no trace of it. He stood remembering, how she had grown from a little girl to his teacher: recalling I have he has they have, in her voice and his for hours, in facing chairs, reading to each other for pleasure and practice, remembering her gestures and expressions in moments when their minds would converge from the farthest points of their respective worlds, remembering how the air between them would seem to glow in those moments of comprehension. It had been more like a friendship than anything he had ever known with a woman; it was like a part of his friendship with her father, and thus her desire had simply ambushed him.

  Now he hoped she would have forgotten all that, that in two years she might haved married and would not be lonely now.

  He heard something fall.

  He looked up the path toward the house.

  She had stopped a short distance up the path, a wooden pail fallen by her feet, and she stood there with her hand at her throat, looking at him.

  She began walking slowly toward him, her hand still at her neck, and she looked so strange, all her colors so pale—hair, face, eyes, limbs, homespun dress, bare feet—it was as if she were a spirit only, mist in the shape of a girl. And what he remembered was true: he did not desire her, did not even want to touch her. Yet his spirit reached for her spirit, as it always had, and he smiled.

  She stopped more than three paces away. She was not smiling. Her eyes were full of tears and doubt; she looked as if she suffered. At last she said, “I knew you were here.” Her voice was weak and small. He took a step toward her, but when she looked as if she would turn and flee like a fawn in the woods that has never seen a person before, he stopped. She was very much changed. Now she said:

  “You told me you would come back.”

  “I come. You see me here.”

  She raised her hand from her throat and covered her mouth with her fingertips. Between her brows there was a knot of agony. She made her hand into a fist and pressed the knuckles against her mouth and shut her eyes as tears began flowing.

  “You came too late!” she sobbed, then whirled to turn her back on him. She stood with her head bent forward, shoulders shaking with sobs, little strangling, high-pitched sobs. Tecumseh was stunned by this, confused and swept by pity. He raised his hands as if to take her shoulders, though she was several paces away, and then he dropped them to his sides. He did not know what to do and did not know what she meant.

  And so he stood at this distance, feeling that to go and touch her would make her run. There was no sound but the breeze in the foliage and her little throat sounds. It was several minutes before she stopped sobbing. Quietly then he moved toward her and went around to stand in front of her. Her hands were down by her belly now and twisting at each other; her head was still forward, and he was looking at the parted hair on top of her head, the pale line of skin. Her yellow hair was in two braids. Strands were loose, stirring in the breeze, gleaming in the sunlight that winked through the blown foliage. In the quiet he said, “Why do I come too late?”

  For a while she neither wept nor spoke and just seemed to be looking at the ground under his feet. Then, her face still down out of his sight, she began talking, slowly, pausing, as if to keep from weeping.

  “You said you would come back soon. You wanted to ask Papa for my hand … We waited and waited … All troubled …”

  For a moment as these words whirled in his head, he had that same wild impulse to run away that he had felt in his first battle. It seemed like something too awful to be really happening to him. The Great Good Spirit did not want red people marrying white people. And it had brought suffering to this good white girl. Then he thought too of his friend, her father. So much must have happened in this family since that night!

  At last he asked her, “You told your father such a thing?”

  She nodded slowly.

  He started to speak, but was bewildered, then angry, and could not think of words. Then he said grimly, “You should not have told him such a thing! Why did you think to tell him that?”

  Now her eyes were full of disbelief, “You gave me a dowry!”

  He barely remembered that word. “Just silver things. They make this happen?”

  She was sobbing again. He looked down on her and then reached out
and cupped her face in his hands and felt her shudder at his touch and felt the wetness of her tears on his palms. She would not look up at him. “My … Rebekah Ga-lo-weh girl. I do not understand this. Tell me all of this.”

  They sat down on a fallen log beside the path, and little by little she told him the story of it, sometimes stopping to cry or for long silences. Sometime during this she had let him take her hand, and he held it as she told him.

  That very night she had told her father that Tecumseh wanted to marry her. “I thought that was what you meant … the silver … you telling me it was a dowry … so, yes.… I told him, ‘Papa, Mister Tecumftha Chief will come and ask you for my hand.’ I thought you would! I really thought that was what you wanted!” Saying this, she slumped and wept again for a long time before she could go on.

  After a while her father had started asking her if she really wanted to be married to a man who was not a Christian. Often he had assembled the family to pray for guidance. They had prayed about the problem for many days before they could talk practically about it. Her father, looking like a wounded man, had spoken over and over of the troubles to be expected in a mixed marriage, but she had known he was mostly worried about the shame. She had protested that Tecumseh was a perfect gentleman by anyone’s reckoning. Her father had replied that however much a gentleman he was, the brethren in the church would not accept him. A year passed in this doubt and misery, then another, and Tecumseh had never come. Had Rebekah not told several people about the proposal, the crisis would have passed in the family. Her father felt embarrassed.

  After a long silence at the end of her story, Tecumseh said, “Your father was my good white friend, but he would not want me to be your husband.”

  She thought, then said, now looking down at his hand holding hers, “He would not want it, but he would bless us. He still … he’s dubious, but he still esteems you very highly. He knows you wouldn’t hurt us on purpose.”

  “And you know that, too?”

  She nodded, swallowing and swallowing. “Yes. But … did you never mean to ask me that?” She shut her eyes and bit her lip and trembled after the question.

  Deeply, sadly stirred by all this, he answered in a gentle voice:

  “Since I first saw the little Ga-lo-weh girl you have been very big in my heart. But I had never thought of it. I did not know dowry meant that kind of a gift. Ah! No!” They sat enveloped in their confusion and regrets for a long time, still holding each other by the hand, and eventually he said, “I must go and speak to your father and tell him I did not know this.” He wondered if her father would try to attack him. It was a dismal possibility. He just did not know how a white man would be about a matter like this. Tecumseh was less afraid of being hurt by Ga-lo-weh than of having to hurt him. But Rebekah shook her head.

  “Papa isn’t here. He’s gone up with gentlemen to Fort Wayne, for the treaty council.”

  Alarm prickled in the back of Tecumseh’s head. Trying to keep his voice calm, he said, “I know of no treaty council. Tell me.”

  She looked up at his face for the first time, and in her eyes was hurt, even anger. “Is that more important to you than I am?”

  “Just tell me of it!” His voice was urgent. If it was in Fort Wayne, it would be Harrison’s council, and that could be more important than anything.

  She looked down and shook her head. “All I know is, it’s with some chiefs, about some land in the territory.… But what about—”

  He stood and pulled her hand to make her stand with him. “I must go. You give me too much for my head. I must think.”

  She held his eyes with hers, and hers were full of the fear that he would stay gone forever if he left now. Desperately she blurted out: “Are you going to think of … us being married?”

  “Because you have asked, I will have to think of it.” He thought of the holy town and all that was being done there and what it was being done for, and of the Prophet’s pronouncements about white and red people marrying. “My friend girl,” he said, “you could not come and live among my people.”

  “I know,” she said, having already given that much thought. “But you could come here and live like us.…” Her chin was trembling, her wet eyelashes were blinking. She saw the sudden hardening of his expression, then at that moment saw beyond him five warriors approaching. She gasped. The warriors, seeing her and Tecumseh, stopped and stared, ten paces away.

  Tecumseh squeezed her hand and released it. “Forgive me for your hurt. I am always your friend and your father’s. Your family will be safe whatever comes. You are very big in my heart, but I am my People. Be strong. Do not look for me anymore.” He was almost choking. “Tanakia,” he said. Farewell.

  TECUMSEH RODE HARD FOR THE FIRST FIVE MILES OR SO, SO that he was always out ahead and his mystified warriors could not see his face. But after he had firmed himself against his feelings, he slowed to a walk. They had scared several white people off the road riding hard like that, and it was not good for a small band of red men to be racing through this part of O-hi-o, even as desperate as he was to learn more about the treaty council as soon as he could.

  After they had ridden a few more miles, Seekabo said, “Father, we saw you shake the hand of the white hag.” Thick Water, who had his memories about the white girl on the path from two years ago, stared ahead and pretended to be disinterested.

  At first Tecumseh was astonished and almost angered by Seekabo’s use of that word. But then he realized that to them, with her pale coloring and yellow hair and distraught face, she must have looked strange and ugly, as he himself had thought she looked until he had gotten used to her and to the goodness in her spirit.

  “She was afraid,” he said. “I took her hand and promised her that no harm would ever come to her family. Remember my promise.”

  They passed and frightened two white men who were riding big-footed draft horses. The farmers looked as if they were ready either to shoot at the Indians or try to lumber off in escape, so Tecumseh rode out to them with a hand up, told them who he was, and explained that he was only passing through in peace, going to his home in the Indiana Territory. He asked, “Do you know anything of the council at Fort Wayne?”

  They probably knew more than they were willing to tell an Indian. One said, “Gov’nor Harrison’s buyin’ some land, is all I know.”

  “Which chiefs?”

  “I don’t know who they are. Little Turtle’s the only one I know of.”

  Tecumseh completely masked his screaming anxiety. “I thank you. I must pass on now.”

  When the Indians had ridden off up their westering road, the white men rode on, much relieved, their heartbeats gradually subsiding to normal. One of them said:

  “So that’s that Tecumseh! Pretty uppity Indian, ain’t he? Talkin’ English and all. Y’know, don’t ye, Jim Galloway says that redskin p’posed to marry his girl Becky. Heard about that? Man, that takes some uppity Indian! Pretty, well-raised gal like her! Man!” He shook his head angrily. “Galloway said she turned him down good and proper, but nice-like. Said she couldn’t be no squaw.” The man’s face was in a sneer.

  After a while the other replied, “That’s somethin’ all right. I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t mess with no daughter of old Jim, even if I wasn’t a redskin. Which I ain’t.”

  RIDING HARD AT THE HEAD OF HIS BODYGUARD, HIS MIND seething with rage and remorse, Tecumseh sped through the sunny, tall grass of the prairie, toward the line of green treetops that marked the valley of the Wabash-se-pe. Above the trees in the pearly blue sky hung the smudge of smoke that marked the site of Prophet’s Town. He galloped headlong down the slopes as the valley opened to view. Such homecomings from their long journeys were usually rich with joy and relief. But Tecumseh was full of bitterness now. It had been growing in him at the thought of Harrison’s greed.

  They thundered down into the upper streets of Prophet’s Town. Open Door had built a good and beautiful town here. It was made up of orderly rows of wigewas, first fi
lling the bottomlands below the Tippecanoe’s mouth, then spreading up these slopes onto the prairie. On a low rise next to the river stood its largest structure, a wide, long house of logs and bark called the House of the Stranger, the shelter for visitors and pilgrims. In a clearing on the bluff at the other end of the town stood a large, traditional council house and next to it a smaller structure that was Open Door’s medicine lodge. It was toward this building that Tecumseh rode now. He waved and answered the greetings of the many villagers who came running and cheering him along the street, but really he hardly saw them, hardly noticed how crowded the town was with pilgrims.

  Open Door, intense and worried, greeted him at the door of his medicine lodge, and the two went inside at once. Open Door said, “You know of the council at Fort Wayne?”

  “Only that it will be. Tell me what you know.”

  “That Harrison is as cunning as the thieving fox. He kept his treaty council from me as long as he could, for he knows we would oppose it. He does not imagine we know of it even now. He has summoned all his faithful red dogs. Little Turtle and Pacane of the Miamis. Of the Delawares, Beaver and Cracking Noise. Winnemac and Five Medals of the Potawatomi. And others, but, of course, none who live on the land he wants. Not us.”

  “What land is it, my brother?”

  Open Door described the boundaries, and Tecumseh’s blood grew hotter at every word.

  It was a vast area of woods and prairies north and east of Vincennes, in the Wabash-se-pe and White River watersheds, from the Greenville Treaty line near O-hi-o all the way across to the Wabash-se-pe and even across it into the Illinois lands. Tecumseh knew very well these lands that were being coveted by Harrison now; a dozen tribes had villages in them and depended upon their hunting grounds for their food. And if Harrison got it, the American boundaries would reach within two days’ march of the Prophet’s town!

  “While you were gone,” Open Door said, “I did what you told me to do to keep the white men at ease about us. I went to Fort Wayne and Vincennes to assure the Americans again that we are peaceful. There is a new Indian agent at Fort Wayne, called Johnston. Wells is gone. Annuity dollars had been sticking to his fingers while he counted them, they say. I got on well with this Johnston. He believed what I said to him, and I thought he would not alarm Harrison about us as Wells was always doing. But when I went to Vincennes in the next moon, Harrison was cold to me. He had changed his manner since the first time I visited him. He accused me of harboring troublemakers here. I assured him that I discourage any talk of troubling the Americans. But I could not make him believe me.