The Red Heart

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “No. I did not hear. Sister, I grieve for the loss you suffered.” She put her cheek to Maconakwa’s.

  “Waneeshee, sister. May these we bear now be soundly born and live long, and grow to be like brothers or sisters, as we have been like sisters.” It was good to be speaking the old tongue again. The Lenapeh and Miami tongues were not much alike. The Miami was softer in the mouth. Speaking the Lenapeh language had been more like uttering bird song, trilling and clicking, and Maconakwa missed it. Sometimes she thought Miami sounded as if the speaker was talking with a mouthful of stew.

  Minnow pointed up the meadow. “I see your husband will run your dark mare. How does he treat you?”

  “Always well. I would not change anything about him.”

  “Wehlee heeleh. I would pound his head bone into flour if I heard he was unkind. Remind him, you and your mother saved him to live.”

  “And you helped to save him too, my sister. But I never have to remind him. He thanks me often. And your husband? You are still well-treated?”

  Momentarily Minnow’s teeth bared in something that did not look good, but then she smiled. “Two times he drank the white man drink. The first time he was howling, like when we found your other husband on the riverbank. You remember how that was. The second time he struck me. Since that time, he has what you call keshkeneshkwa to remind him he will drink no third time.”

  Cut Finger, hearing her name, looked up, curious, but not more curious than Maconakwa, who said, “He has a hurt finger?”

  “Like yours. I bit the end off and spat it in his face. I do not expect him to drink spirit water again.”

  At the thought, Maconakwa put her palm over her breast, blinked, and made a whistling sound. Just then an outcry swelled along the line of waiting spectators. With a rumble of many hooves, the racing horses were coming, and their riders’ yipping cries were building. The encouraging howls of the spectators rose also, and Maconakwa began yelling her husband’s name.

  It was not a mere horse race, it was something more dangerous, requiring more skill. Each rider carried a lance in one hand and a quirt in the other. At this end of the meadow there hung from a tree limb a tough hoop of twined vines wrapped in leather, no broader than a hand. It was decorated with a long white goose feather, to help both the riders and the spectators see it in the melee. Twenty riders were coming at full gallop toward that hoop, which they could hardly see from the starting line, except for the goose feather under it. The winner of the race would be the rider who could thrust his lance tip through the little hoop and yank it from the limb, then get clear of the mob and race back to the starting line without losing the hoop off his lance. Upon a limb near the hoop crouched a trusted referee.

  The broad rank of riders had started abreast, but as they all converged toward the hoop, they became a compacted mass, shouldering, elbowing, crushing inward, sometimes even slashed by others’ quirts. The only plan in any rider’s head was to be out in front when he reached the hoop, with his lance clear to penetrate the hoop. Getting there first was the best advantage, but it did not guarantee winning. Too many other things could happen.

  The first of those other things began to happen now just as The Awl, on the swift dark mare, thundered past his wife and daughter, half a horse length ahead of the rest, his lance tip closing toward the center of the hoop. She did not see what happened. Perhaps another horse’s hoof hit the hind leg or hoof of the dark mare and made her falter, or another horse’s shoulder hit her rump, or somebody’s lance hit The Awl’s shoulder; Maconakwa, flinching against bits of grass and dirt kicked up by the cluster of hard-driving horses, saw only that her husband’s lance missed the hoop by a hand’s breath. Another lance hit the rim of the hoop and set it lurching, bouncing. At once the mass of yipping riders began reining in and around under the tree. Horses sat, reared, careened, fell, collided with others. Some lances hit the overhead limb and splintered. The hoop swayed and bobbled, now an almost impossible target. Now the riders still mounted were milling and brawling under the tree, madly jabbing and fending and thrusting at the wobbly hoop. Even over the yipping and howling and the whinnying horses, she could hear the clicking and clacking of the lances, and the referee observer sprang like a squirrel to a higher limb to get out of reach of the flailing lance tips.

  Keeping a hold on the hand of her daughter, who seemed to want to run toward the melee, Maconakwa craned to see her husband and her horse. She saw the mare backing out of the brawl, saddle empty, and her heart seized with alarm.

  Next she saw her husband run, stooped, out from between the dancing legs of horses. His tunic was bloody. He snatched up a fallen lance, or rather half of a broken one. Then he ran halfway around the screeching mayhem, grabbed the rein rope of the mare, and swung on. Kicking her flanks, he plunged back inside the churning mass. Minnow’s voice was shrieking, hundreds of other voices were shrieking, and the knot of riders slammed and yelled and jabbed. An absurd thought flashed through Maconakwa’s mind that her husband might be fortunate at such a moment as this to be deaf.

  Instantly then rose a louder howl from the riders, and the mass of them began to break loose and stream outward in one direction like water flung from a pot. For an instant, near the head of that moving salient, she saw the white flash of the goose feather, the hoop bobbling on the end of an upraised lance, then another lance thwacking against that one, and there was another howl as the hoop disappeared and then it came flopping and jouncing out along the ground toward the spectators and the horsemen came veering after it. The watchers screamed and surged backward out of its way, snatching their children after them.

  Almost at Maconakwa’s feet she saw a lance slip through the hole in the hoop and raise it up. Dozens of hooves flung grass and clods among the spectators, and then the horses were thundering away down the field again, toward the starting line, leaving a wake of limping horses and dazed, dismounted riders and splintered lances all over the field. She heard a great, deep cheer at the far end of the racecourse as the contestants swarmed past the line. Someone had succeeded in taking the hoop down there, but it was impossible from here to see who had done it. The crowd of spectators, from both sides of the racecourse, was now sprinting down that way, cheering and laughing. Maconakwa, with her five-year-old daughter in tow and her belly heavy with child, was among the stragglers.

  But even over the heads of the others, she could see the glorious and unexpected sight: her own husband, though nearly twice the age of any of the other riders, was the one in the center of all the cheering, sitting bloody but smiling on the dark mare, holding overhead half a lance, with the muddy, leather-covered hoop hanging from it and the broken, trampled goose feather swaying beneath.

  Her deaf man and her dark mare had won the Little War of the Hoop!

  Maconakwa was uncomfortable in the house of Little Turtle. The room had corners and straight walls and ceilings. She sat on a chair, which would have been constricting even without the great weight of a baby in her, and the edge of the chair pressed on the backs of her knees, making her feet tingle. And because of her swollen belly, she had to sit far enough back from the table’s edge to give herself breathing room.

  It was strange to be sitting on furniture. Maconakwa’s mind and body had distant remembrance of chairs and benches, and of a table that held a plate of food just under one’s chin, so when she held a silver fork to eat with, her hand remembered at once how to manipulate it. Her husband was awkward with it.

  This was how dining was done sometimes in Little Turtle’s big and solid square-cornered house near the fort, as he often had white people as guests. Now Maconakwa watched the sakima as closely as she could without seeming rude. He had magnificent eyes that guttered with delight or flashed with anger when he talked of the things that concerned his Miami People, but often those magnificent eyes squinted with pain, for he lately suffered from a rare kind of illness that made the joints of his hands and feet swell and redden. White people called it “gout,” and it was an i
llness of excruciating pain with no known remedy.

  Whenever her husband came up the river to the fort to Council with Little Turtle and the other Miami chiefs, she helped him understand some of the things that his ears could not pick out anymore. At first it had been only the high sounds, but now, he complained, it was like swimming underwater and trying to listen to men talking on shore. Whatever the gun blast injured in his head eleven summers ago, that had been just the beginning of the loss. Often he could understand nothing in Council except what she or other hand-signing interpreters could express to him. He had offered to retire as chief of his village and let his Council elect a chief who could hear. But in reply they said that his heart and brain were worth more than another man’s ears, and voted to retain him as their village chief. They had said also that they did not wish to replace their sakima’s wife, who, though a red-hair born of wapsituk, was as good as a People could want their chief’s wife to be. Thus Maconakwa and her husband were often in the company of Little Turtle, and in his councils, and were informed on matters he kept putting before the Long Knife government chief.

  The latest main chief Little Turtle had met was a man who had never been a soldier. His name was Jefferson. It was presumed that since this Jefferson was never a war chief, he must therefore be a shaman of some sort, in order to be important enough to lead his whole nation. Little Turtle had described Jefferson as very tall, red-haired, and intelligent, but a soft speaker one could hardly hear. “Aha!” The Awl laughed. “Like me listening to anybody!”

  Now at the table Little Turtle began speaking of things he had discussed with Jefferson. Little Turtle’s voice was clear, loud and pleasant, such a strong voice that even The Awl could hear some of his words. Little Turtle was saying:

  “He wants us to learn their ways of raising food and meat animals, so we will not have to range far to hunt. I told him it was always our way for men to hunt, but that we will learn to change, if we must to keep our people fed. We will have to learn that as our land grows smaller, as the whites move in closer.”

  Yes, Maconakwa thought, that is always their reason for everything they want us to do. They want us to get used to the shrinking of our country, because they mean to keep taking it. A wapsi chief named Harrison, who had been a young soldier of Wayne a decade ago, had made several treaties in the last two years, buying vast lands in the south and west. Little Turtle himself had signed those treaties, encouraged by Wild Potato Wells, and by signing them had made enemies in other tribes. It was a sad thing to think of, and hard to speak of in Little Turtle’s presence.

  “Jefferson,” Little Turtle was saying now, “sends us some plows and hoes and wagons. Some good farmers, of a people called Quakers, will come and teach us to farm that way, and teach us many things.”

  Maconakwa was startled to hear that remembered name.

  Little Turtle went on: “Brothers, I know my people well. I fear they will not want to help themselves in the new ways as much as the Quaker people want to help them. I fear our hunters will not want to put their hands to farm tools, or to making fences, or to raise pigs and cows. They will say, ‘Our Creator did not instruct us that way; he told us to be hunters and go where the animals are.’ But we will have to change, or we will starve.

  “I know also, brothers, that those of our people who have learned the need for spirit water, they will be angry with me because I made Jefferson promise to keep it away from here. Some have already warned my son-in-law Captain Wells that it will go hard for him if they cannot get it to drink.” Little Turtle rose, wincing with pain. “Brothers, listen well to me. What comes will be hard for us. We must pray that the Great Spirit will help our People see their true needs and change with them. You must help me persuade them it is good to cultivate the soil and bad to drink spirit water.

  “I will send another letter to the Quakers and ask them to send their farmer-teachers quickly if they have not already. I ask you to prepare your people’s hearts to welcome them. Without those Quakers, who are reputed never to cheat or make war, our people’s troubles will grow ever worse.”

  Maconakwa sat on the unfamiliar chair seat remembering as well as she could what her Quaker family had been like. Truly, she could remember nothing bad. It seemed that they must really be different from all the other wapsituk. Her heart felt so big with thinking of Quakers that she felt she should speak for them. And so she signed to her husband, asking if it would be appropriate for her to speak; since this was not exactly a Council, she did not know the protocol for putting forth her own words.

  He looked at her a little warily, but had faith in her judgment and sense, and he addressed Little Turtle, saying, “My wife Maconakwa asks if she might speak to us on a thought she has.”

  Little Turtle looked at her, and with a nod he raised his palm and motioned for her to stand, and told the people, “We know Maconakwa, wife of The Awl, she who is good to all the people and is a healer. Let us hear her.”

  When she stood, her right leg almost buckled under her. The hard edge of the chair had made her leg, as she remembered her white family used to say, go to sleep. She had to brace her palms on the edge of the table and keep wiggling her tingling foot and try not to seem awkward, even with the baby’s weight pulling down.

  “Our sakima the Little Turtle,” she said, “tells us that those called Quakers are honest and right-thinking even though they are white-skinned. You might doubt—”

  “Indeed we might!” several murmured, smirking.

  “Hear me, my brothers and sisters,” she went on. “I was born in a white-face family. You know that. You see me and know that. I have lived now for nearly thirty summers among the Lenapeh and the Miami, and these are my People.

  “But I can remember that my birth family were those called Quakers …” She saw a widening of Little Turtle’s eyes and heard several of the people in the room murmur with interest and surprise. “I remember,” she went on, “that no lies were ever told in that family. No one ever hurt another. No one ever drank of spirit water. All worked hard and grew food and all did as they promised. If Quakers come here, you will be glad, I believe …” She hesitated then, wondering whether she had been too impulsive, or had given too strong a testimonial based on the vaguest of childhood memories, which are oftimes more wistful than true.

  But then Little Turtle thanked her for saying what she had said, and told the people that what she had told was true, according to what he had seen of Quakers. She sat down, blushing, eyes modestly lowered, and it was not until she was seated and daring to look about again that she became aware that William Wells was staring at her. She was sorry she had spoken. She had long ago been warned that if he knew enough information about her, he might sell her name.

  Little Turtle asked Wells to explain some things about the wapsi government and how it worked, and what might be expected to happen, and the deeds of the wapsi chief named Harrison, who lived at Vincennes, near the other end of the Wabash Sipu.

  “All of your lives,” Wells said, “you have seen the tribes being pushed westward. Perhaps you have thought that if the pushing continues, you can just keep moving farther west before it. You would not like going, but you believed you could keep going that way.

  “But by his treaties, this man Harrison now has all the land from the Kankakee Sipu west to the great Missi Sipu, and so it is now useless for the tribes to think they can back away from the Long Knives by moving west. What is left of land that way is the place of Potawatomis, Kickapoos, Kaskaskias, Sauks, and Winnebagos. You cannot move in on top of them, and they can back off no farther because Harrison already has the land beyond them. The space for all the tribes grows smaller, and Jefferson has ordered Harrison to keep making treaties, which will make the land even smaller.

  “That, brothers, is why you must obey the wishes of the great chief Jefferson, and learn the ways of the whites, so that you may live richly, as they do, on less land. If you raise your own meat animals instead of chasing game animals far and
wide, you can live well on small pieces of land. That is why my father and I urge you to learn to live as the whites do.”

  After Wells sat down, and Maconakwa had sign-translated all his words to her husband, The Awl stood up. He faced Wells and Little Turtle, and he spoke, in his voice that had grown louder since he had grown deaf:

  “Father, and brother, what you say raises in me much sadness and doubt, and I ask you to make something clear to me.

  “If, as you say, the white man knows how to live richly on just a little piece of land, then why does he need so much that he keeps taking from us all of ours?”

  Sweet Breeze, the wife of Wells, later came toward Maconakwa as the wives sat around a fire outside the house, some with blankets drawn about them, the spring nights still being cool. The men were inside the house with Little Turtle and Wells, all engaged in talks with Five Medals, a Potawatomi chief, about the matter of farming and livestock raising in the white man’s way. The chiefs and chieftains in the house had been given cigars of rolled tobacco by Wells, and were smoking those, while outdoors most of the wives had drawn out their little tobacco pipes and were smoking their more familiar kinnikinnick mixtures.

  Sweet Breeze in full maturity was still a beautiful woman, and her richly made white-fashion clothing, with ribbons and lace, reflected the wealth her husband was accumulating as the Indian agent at Fort Wayne. Though many of the wives here had known Sweet Breeze all their lives, and had been her playmates in childhood and her friends when her husband was Wild Potato, they now were reserved and distant in her presence, barely polite, either through distrust, envy, or fear. Maconakwa had no reason to dislike her, but because of her feelings about Wells, she was not very happy to see Sweet Breeze approaching with her eyes and smile set upon her.

  Sweet Breeze for a while spoke of pregnancy and birth-giving. Maconakwa was interested, of course, but was worried by the looks they were receiving from the other women around the fire. At last Sweet Breeze brought forth what she apparently had come to speak of, saying: