Frances could now understand a little of the Indian people’s language, just enough to obtain what she needed and be polite, and since Neepah knew a few words of English, Frances could ask her about the meanings of stories, and find out what some of the things were that she saw around the village. So much was new; so many things were done in ways she had never seen.
One thing it was hard for her to figure out was which children belonged to which women. There were several girls of different ages who were in Neepah’s lodge so much that at first Frances thought they were all her daughters, but they did not sleep there. Women came and helped with chores, and Frances wondered if they were aunts. Then days would go by and those women would not come, but others would. They would sit around Neepah’s fire and talk long, long, about matters Frances could not understand even if she knew some of the words. And now that the maple sugar was being made, all the women and children seemed to belong to each other, as if the whole village were one family. There were few men about, and none of them ever slept in Neepah’s wikwam, though she fed any man who came hungry.
One girl perhaps one or two years older than Frances, the skinny one who had rinsed out her dress at the creek the first day, sometimes slept in the same blanket with Neepah. Her name was Numaitut, meaning the Minnow. She had a long scar on her thigh. She seldom spoke, but stared so hard one could almost feel it.
Frances now stacked her armload of sticks on the pile near the fire. Neepah said, “Waneeshee, Palanshess.” That meant, Thank you, Frances. This language had nothing that sounded like the letter F or the letter R or those letters together, and when they tried to say Frances, it was “Palanshess.” At home Frances had learned the alphabet and the sounds of the letters and had just begun to learn to read, and so she understood this about the difficulty with the letters. These people had some sounds she could not yet quite make either, though she was trying to learn and get used to them. One was the start of their word for corn, xaskwim, and it was easy to remember but hard to say because it was the sound you would make if a kernel of corn stuck on the back of your tongue and you tried to blow it out without offending anyone at the table. In fact the whole word sounded like someone hacking a kernel up but keeping it in the mouth to swallow again. That made it easy for her to remember.
Another sound they had was not even like any letter she knew, but was like the little popping sound you made deep in your throat when you said “uh-oh.” It was in the middle of many of their words. She was trying to learn how to say the name of rabbit, which had it: chema’mays. Then there was the word for mouse—axpo’kwess—which had the popping sound right after the hacking sound and was very difficult to say. Sometimes when Frances was alone she would try to practice such words, and after a few times with the mouse word she would have to spit. She spent a great deal of her thinking time trying to learn their language because she was hungry to talk. She had talked all the time at home, so much that sometimes she was known as the Jibber-Jabber.
Here among these people there was so much to ask and so much to say, but it was all backed up in her, and would be until she learned their language.
“Palanshess,” the woman said. Frances looked up. Neepah was holding out her stirring ladle so that some of the steaming amber syrup was running off into the snow, where it hardened at once. Frances smiled and thanked her. “Waneeshee, Neepah.” She picked the little brown plug out of the snow, put one end in her mouth, and sucked the melting sweetness. Neepah nodded, and her tough, broad face was soft with affection.
That night when they were resting in the wikwam, the old lehpawcheek came in from the brush pile where he had been working and sat down on the other side of the fire, and the women fed him. He kept looking at Frances. He would smile at her, and when she smiled back at him, he would nod and chuckle and say something to the women.
When he had eaten, he set aside his bowl and withdrew a short, stone-bowled pipe from a raccoon-skin bag, and filled the pipe with a mixture of crumbs and flakes from a smaller bag all decorated with colorful quills. He leaned forward and held the end of a twig in the fire until it was burning, then lit the pipe with it, sucking on the stem and puffing. Then he turned the pipe around to point the stem in every direction, and resumed puffing, looking contented. The smoke had a thick, sweet, grassy fragrance. Finally he leaned toward Frances and said, “Wehlee heeleh, you.”
“Waneeshee, lehpawcheek,” she said, as it was mannerly to thank someone for a compliment. It seemed to please him. All his wrinkles gathered up in a smile.
He touched his chest with his forefinger. “Story from me,” he said, then pointed to her. “Of tindeh, fire, ahhh, gift.” He raised his eyebrows, and, thinking she understood, she nodded. “Kulesta,” he said, and she knew that meant “Listen.”
“Long time before. Never cold, those time.”
She nodded again, leaning forward, surprised and delighted not only to be hearing a story, but especially to be hearing enough English to understand.
“Muhnuka’hazh, bird name. Many color bird.” He made an arc through the air before him, and somehow she thought she had heard and seen this before. He made the arc again and said, “Many color in sky, this so,” and made the arc again, and she said:
“Rainbow?”
“E heh!” He pointed at her, grinning. “Yes. Muhnuka’hazh name Rainbow Crow.” She knew that was what he said, though his pronunciation was odd. He went on: “Rainbow Crow sing so good.” He tilted his head back, closed his eyes and whistled a lovely trill, with his fingers fluttering to show bird notes floating through the air, and she believed she understood that, although she had never thought crows sang beautifully, but really very badly. But then, she had never known a many-colored crow either, and this was his story, so she believed it and waited for more of it. She looked and saw that Neepah was watching her and watching the old man too, and was smiling fondly, like a mother. The girl Minnow snuggled at Neepah’s side.
And the old man went on with his story, and it was hard to understand, and sometimes the story would stop until someone else in the hut thought of a way to say it, or sign it with hands, and even though the story stumbled along like that, Frances could nevertheless see the story bit by bit in her mind. It was of Rainbow Crow, who was beautiful to see and hear back in the ancient days before cold came, and of how Snow Spirit appeared in the world, and all the animals and people were freezing, and a messenger had to be chosen to go up to Kijilamuh ka’ong, the Creator Who Creates By Thinking What Will Be, and the messenger was to ask the Creator to think of the world as warm again so they would not all freeze to death. Rainbow Crow was chosen to go, and he flew upward for three days. He got the Creator’s attention by singing beautifully, but when he begged the Creator to make it warm again, the Creator said he could not, because he had thought of cold and could not unthink it. But he did think of Fire, a thing that could warm the creatures even when it was cold. And so he poked a stick into the sun until it was burning, and gave it to Rainbow Crow to carry back to earth for the creatures, telling him to hurry before the stick burned all up.
Rainbow Crow dove down and flew as fast as he could go. The burning stick charred all his beautiful feathers until they were black, and since he was carrying the stick in his beak, he breathed the smoke and heat until his throat was hoarse. And so the Rainbow Crow was all black and had an unpleasant cawing voice forever after, but he was honored because he had brought tindeh, fire, for everyone to use. The old man finished the story by saying that the crow is still highly honored, and never killed by hunters or animals, and that if you look closely at the crow’s black feathers, you can still see the many colors gleaming in the black. It had taken the old man a long time to finish the story because of the difficulty of the languages, and it was time to go back out into the night and take their turn carrying wood and stirring the maple syrup.
But Frances was happier than she had been for a long time, because she realized now what a wonderful gift fire is, to warm people and cook food
and boil maple sugar, and because she now loved and respected Crow, whom she had never liked before.
A tall, limber pole swayed in the breeze outside the door of a wikwam near Neepah’s home. The pole caught Frances’ notice because of the two small decorated hoops hanging at the top. She stopped, stood in the snow, and squinted up.
Laced into the center of each little bright-painted hoop was a clump of long hair. The hair swung about when the breeze turned the hoops.
The hair in one hoop was rather the color of her own, but with gray in it. It reminded her of her papa’s hair. The other lock of hair was like her grandpa’s, all silvery white. The look of the hair reminded her of them, and made her think of her family, from whom she had been brought away, and the thought of them gave her a twinge of fright and sadness.
This Indian town was not a bad place to be in, and was always interesting, and the people took good care of her, but she hurt with a longing for her family. It was still not right that she was here.
She heard someone come close behind her, and turned to see the big woman Neepah, who took such good care of her, and the thin girl Minnow. Frances once had thought Minnow was a daughter of Neepah, but recently had learned that she wasn’t. Neepah was just one of the women who had taken care of Minnow since soldiers carried her real mother away. That had happened while the soldiers were burning the town Minnow had lived in. It was a frightful thing to think of, and that was all Frances knew about it.
Neepah raised her chin toward the hoops, her way of pointing at things, and her face looked as if she had tasted something sour.
“From wapsituk,” Neepah said in a hissing, mean voice. “Mata Zhaynkee. Bad English.” Frances knew wapsi meant white; snow was wapsi to look at. English were wapsi people. But what did Neepah mean was from white people? Neepah was still looking distastefully up at the hair in the hoops, and with a strange, sickening feeling, Frances remembered what had happened to Nathan Kingsley in front of her house. The hair in the hoops must be the scalps of white people.
Bad English, Neepah had said.
Just then Minnow reached over and tugged a lock of Frances’ hair, looked up at the hoops, bared her teeth and made her eyes fierce, then let go, smiled at her and nodded.
Shivering, from fright as much as cold, Frances thought of the words she had learned, enough to ask why such people were bad.
There then poured from Neepah a rapid stream of spitting, growling words, a few of them English words Frances barely recognized, others Indian words Frances partly followed, most flowing too fast to follow at all; but at length Frances understood that the bad white people had lied to the Lenapehwuk, Neepah’s people, and cheated them, driven them from their homelands in the East, given them sicknesses, carried them off to make work slaves of them, burned their towns, destroyed their food, and killed them with guns and swords.
Neepah said something to Minnow, who pulled up her dress to expose the terrible scar on her thigh. Neepah managed to make Frances understand that when the wapsi soldiers took Minnow’s mother away, they hit baby Minnow with a sword. At that time Neepah had had her own baby girl at one breast, and then had to take Minnow to the other. Neepah’s face and gestures were at one moment violent and vicious, the next, tender and motherly.
Frances by now had forgotten the scalps on the pole, this was such a frightful story. Then she thought of what she had just heard, and asked:
“You have a meeumuns? What child is your daughter?”
The woman replied through thin, hard lips: “Nagax’e. Ong ul. Dead now. By more soldiers later. Mata wapsituk!” Again she jerked her chin toward the high-hanging scalps.
Frances looked up at them. It was hard to believe that people did such things to each other, even though she remembered Wareham’s dead soldier brother with his bloody head. Cutting children and taking their mothers away, she could scarcely imagine. Those scalps up there that had reminded her of her papa’s and grandpa’s hair reminded her as well that not all white men were bad; her family could never have done such things. They were Friends. Friends never hurt anyone. She would have to tell that to Neepah, make her understand that her own people, though wapsituk, had never done such things.
It was some comfort to know that the hair that looked like her papa’s and grandpa’s could not actually be theirs, for they were Friends, not bad wapsi men, and so they would never be killed and scalped like that.
She saw Wareham Kingsley again that day. He was near a group of Indian boys who were sliding snow snakes. It was one of those wonderful games they were always playing, like throwing lances and shooting arrows at rolling hoops. The snow snakes were like walking staffs, curved at the heavy end, without bark, smooth and slicked with wax. The boys would trample out long icy grooves in the snow and then compete to make their sticks go slithering farthest along the channel.
Wareham was not throwing a stick. He was sulking, half watching. Frances had observed now and then that the Indian boys admitted Wareham into their rough games, but he usually dropped out, frowning and acting hurt. She thought he was silly not to play in those exciting games. She wished girls played snow snakes. She could feel in herself the grace and strength to make a snow snake go as far as any boy possibly could. At home among her brothers and sisters she had been a much praised hoop roller, able to fling a grapevine hoop so strongly and gracefully that it would roll far and steady, and the motion of flinging a snow snake seemed to be the same. If she ever got to be in a snow snake game, she would not be like Wareham, quitting and sulking. She would perhaps even win against boys. How that would surprise Wareham! she thought.
So she asked the old wise one, Owl, who was always breaking sticks for firewood, if he could find her a good snow-snake stick. He raised his eyebrows in surprise, but said nothing.
The next day he brought her a dogwood stick as pale as her skin, with a finger notch in the small end and a smooth, curved-up head with two brass tacks set in as eyes. It was a beautiful thing, and he had smoothed and waxed it till it was slick as bacon.
“Waneeshee, Muxumsah!” she exclaimed. She had remembered that she was supposed to call old men Grandfather. But he seemed stern and displeased. She went away, a little worried, to show the wonderful stick to Neepah.
The woman admired it, then said: “Did you remember what you are supposed to do?”
“Yes. I called him Grandfather and thanked him.”
“But you gave him nothing? Palanshess, you must always give a person some k’sha t’he when you ask a favor! Here.” She gave Frances a twist of tobacco for Owl.
“A ho!” he chuckled when she gave it to him. “Now may your snow snake go far!”
On a day not long after the sugaring was finished and there was still deep snow, Frances brought her new shiny stick to a boys’ snow-snake game and had just boldly stepped up to throw when a boy’s voice called her name and she looked up and saw a cousin.
He was behind a warrior on the back of a horse in a line of horses passing out of the village. Some of the horses carried greencoat soldiers. The horses were going out the gate of the palisade. Frances stood holding her dogwood snow snake in a ready-to-throw position, and she was trying to remember that cousin’s name when the horse he was on went through the gate and he was out of sight beyond the palisade. The boys in the game were yelling for her to fling her stick. She knew they did not like her being in their game, especially since some girls had come to watch her, and that the boys would like any excuse to put her out, so she couldn’t just stand there. She leveled her stick and aimed its head along the icy groove, ran forward with her arm cocked and then stopped and gave the stick a hard underhand pitch very low, and the stick entered the groove flying level and straight. It was a perfect throw, the stick hissing and singing along the groove. The watching girls cheered, but the boys jeered, because her throw went farther than any of theirs had yet. She knew better than to toss her head and look smug, but couldn’t help it. She tossed her red hair and smirked. That made some of the boys
angry, and the girls laughed at them.
She kept doing so well that eventually the boys decided they were tired of the snow-snake game and took their sticks and left. It was only then that Frances thought again about seeing her relative, and she remembered who he was.
She had seen him only two or three times. He was called Cousin Isaac.
Isaac Tripp, she remembered. He was named after his grandpa, who was also her grandpa. He had lived on another farm Grandpa Tripp owned elsewhere in the valley. Now she remembered hearing, back in the summertime, that Indians had carried him away after the big battle in the summer. She could remember how upset Grandpa Tripp had been then, and she thought, I wish I could go home and tell Grandpa that I saw Cousin Isaac today and that he didn’t look hurt, so Grandpa could stop worrying about him.
But if I could go there and do that, Grandpa could stop worrying about me, too.
For a while the girls played with Frances’ snow snake. Later, as she plodded home with it, happy but tired, she wondered why she hadn’t seen Cousin Isaac in the town before. During the sugar-making, everyone had been out and busy in the village, and she had seen several white people besides the soldiers. She had seen Wareham Kingsley many times. Maybe those other white people too had been caught by the Indians and brought here.
And then she thought, I wonder where those soldiers were going with him? I wonder if they were taking him home!
The winter sunlight slanting through the trees made long blue shadows on the snow. Between the wikwams the snow was trampled down hard where people had been walking, but it was very deep everywhere else. It was far up the sides of the wikwams. One morning Frances had offered to clean some of that deep snow down off the sides of the wikwam, but Neepah had stopped her, saying that snow kept the winter wind out, so the wikwam was easier to keep warm inside.
The Red Heart Page 6