The Red Heart

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  At that moment the image of her dream came up like smoke in the darkness of her soul: a woman who looked like herself but in gray white-people clothes calling and reaching for her and then embracing her.

  It could only have been her birth mother who had come to her in spirit. At such a moment. When her own son died.

  Maconakwa sensed this, saw this in the roiling smoke of her soul, like a dim vision. But she did not think of it. She was at this moment beyond thinking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Autumn 1809

  Fort Wayne

  It was true that the only badness in the young man had been the badness of the spirit water. Maconakwa watched him coming with her husband from the gunsmith’s, and she thought, He is a fine boy. She would never have believed that she could feel affection for one who had killed her baby, but she had come to care for him like a son in the two years he had been theirs.

  He had not remembered anything he did when he was mad with the whiskey. He had not remembered fighting with anybody or why he would have fought with anybody, and did not remember throwing the hatchet that killed the baby. When he awakened from the whiskey stupor and learned what he had done, he wept with anguish and knelt on the ground with his head down, waiting for The Awl to break his skull with a tomahawk, as he had known it should be. But The Awl, knowing it was the whiskey that had done it, and that it had been an accident even then, stood over him for a little while, and when the boy began singing his death song, The Awl had said, “We do not choose to kill you. No, you will replace our son. Get up and come home.” It was understood that if they found they liked him well enough, they would tell the Council they wished to have a ceremony to adopt him as a true son.

  They were beginning to think they would do so this year, and he was happy about it. His name was Kehkeon, or Clipped Hair, because his father had been a warrior of the Ottawa, whose fighting men wore their hair in a short standing crest. Maconakwa and her husband would give him a name of their choosing if they adopted him as their son, and that name probably would be Waweah, Round One, the name of the child he had killed. One could change names. Maconakwa had been Wehletawash once. Her husband had just recently changed his name to Deaf Man, since that was how everybody knew him.

  So this one probably would be named Round One, a name that would be both an honor and a burden upon him, as he would have to assume and fulfill the love they had had for the child. But Round One would be suitable for this one’s name too because his face was broad and his head was large and round. She watched her husband and the young man mingle with the people near the fort and her heart was warm but bittersweet. Good things always came from bad, the Old Ones said, but they would not return to you unless you made yourself worthy. You had to keep being good no matter what bad things happened to you; that was how you remained worthy. Giving this youth a good place and letting him live well was the only way they could have kept the baby’s death from being a sad end. This youth would live the good life that the baby had not been allowed. And now the baby was back with the Spirit Grandmother, from whence he had come, and babies were always happy to go back to her.

  Another sad thing had been that Sweet Breeze, daughter of Little Turtle and wife of Wells, had passed to the Spirit World. Whatever one had thought of Wells, his wife had been good and true to her people, most believed, and they were sad for her because she had had to live so many years of her life shadowed by the doubts of her husband’s heart.

  Wells had long been spying on the Prophet for Little Turtle and for the white chief named Harrison. He had even warned the Prophet and Tecumseh to abandon their holy town near the old Greene Ville fort, telling them that was white men’s land, telling them that the white men crowding into that country did not like having so many Indians there. That discontent had grown worse and more tense and dangerous until last year, when the two Shawnee brothers decided to heed such warnings and abandon their holy town.

  But instead of making Little Turtle and Wells content, that move had made them even more angry and fearful. The Prophet had led his pilgrim families and Shawnee followers westward, right through Miami country, down the Mississinewa Sipu, right past Deaf Man’s village, toward the Wabash Sipu, all in canoes and on rafts.

  Little Turtle, afraid they would settle too close to Fort Wayne, had ridden down to head them off at the mouth of the Mississinewa Sipu, despite his failing health, to try to scare the Prophet away from the Wabash Valley. When Little Turtle and the Prophet confronted each other, something happened that no one would have believed:

  Little Turtle, he whose warriors had twice defeated the Long Knife army and chased it out of the Ohio country, had been laughed at, scolded, and told to go away—not by Tecumseh the warrior, but by Open Door, the Prophet, who had been for most of his life a drunkard and coward. And those standing behind the Prophet had been not warriors, but just the elders, women, and children who were hauling their baggage and tools and seeds into the valley of the Wabash Sipu.

  And most amazing, so amazing it had been talked of all the year since, was that Little Turtle and his chiefs had turned around before that scolding and ridden back to Fort Wayne!

  But who, said others, dared defy a man who had commanded the sun?

  The Prophet and his followers then had gone on down the Wabash and established his new holy town on old Potawatomi lands near the mouth of the K’tippecanuh Sipu, nearly midway between Fort Wayne and Vincennes. For a time there had been no trouble.

  But now, in the moon just past, old Sakima Little Turtle had done something so much to the white men’s advantage that it might bring war upon all his Miami people again. With other chiefs who were already tamed to the interests of the white men’s government, he had signed a treaty with Harrison giving the whites a vast land east of the lower Wabash Sipu—land that had not even been their land, but was occupied by several other tribes. It was said that Harrison had given the signers very fine gifts and some money to make them agreeable to signing.

  Some of Little Turtle’s own people believed that the old sakima was so happy to give that land because he knew it would put the white men’s boundary uncomfortably close to the Prophet’s new holy town. Miamis did not like to think that Little Turtle could have become so mean and spiteful in spirit that he would have done it for that reason. Some quietly said that perhaps he was so sick and sore in his old body that his mind was not well either. Some blamed Wells. Others blamed money.

  But it had made the world feel ready for war: that old sense that the whites were coming closer and that the warriors were acting all stirred up, like hornets who feel someone coming too near their nest. It was a sense she had grown up with, years ago, of everybody being ready to fight and talking about fighting. She could remember her Lenapeh father, old Tuck Horse, always being on edge, always proud and watchful and suspicious, bristling like a porcupine, ready even in old age to fight to protect his People. She could remember her mother, Flicker, always being ready for the worst to happen, always keeping everything packed in such a way that it could be carried off quickly if the Long Knives’ army was seen.

  Here anew was a feeling that she and all the people had always felt back in the days before the treaty at Greene Ville when the general called Wayne had finally whipped it out of them and made them tame. Since then, for some fifteen summers there had been peace. Everyone was used to it. Most of the children had grown up not knowing the dread of hearing soldier drums or booming cannons or seeing the clouds of smoke towering over the treetops where towns burned.

  But even in the time of peace since that treaty, there always was pressure from the white men: the strange diseases that came and made whole villages of people sick to death, the whiskey sellers who were always around with their spirit water, which made false visions and mindless violence. The tribes needed to keep moving away from where the white men were numerous, in order to find game, but the people liked trading post goods and didn’t want to move too far from those. Indian hunters were often found de
ad in the woods with white men’s boot tracks all around. Accusations were made against Indians whenever a white man’s horse or cow disappeared. Maconakwa was always hearing such incidents discussed in Council. And every year or so there came troubling news that some other part of the country had been sold to the white chief Harrison. Maconakwa could almost feel the Miami lands shrinking around her.

  There had been marriages between white men and women of the tribes, and children born who had the blood of both races in their veins, children who had names like Charlie Williams as well as their real names. Of course, Maconakwa’s own children were mixed-bloods, but because their mother instead of father was white, they would never have wapsi names. Cut Finger, now nine summers of age, had no white girl name. She did not look at all like a white girl, being pretty and brown, although when she stood in sunlight there was a ruddy light in her black hair.

  Deaf Man and Clipped Hair sat down nearby, facing Maconakwa and Cut Finger, who were intently at work making buttons. Deaf Man smiled and held up an iron tool he had acquired from the gunsmith, then laid his old musket across his lap and concentrated his attention on it. Clipped Hair watched him, face set in similar concentration.

  Maconakwa and her daughter were making buttons of deer antler, which they would trade at the trading store for a new iron kettle to take back to Deaf Man’s village. Their old one had cracked and it leaked. They had brought deer antlers to an old Miami man who possessed a white men’s saw. He had cut the antlers up into many little disks. Maconakwa and Cut Finger were now bent over these disks, Maconakwa twirling a bow drill to make two holes in the center of each disk for thread to go through, while Cut Finger smoothed and rounded the edges and polished the surfaces by rubbing them on a chunk of wet sandstone. They would give a fourth of the many buttons to the man with the saw as his payment for cutting the disks, and then they would trade most of the others for the kettle, keeping enough to trade in their own village or give as gifts. The trading store also had brass buttons and shell buttons made by white people far away, but those cost more than some people cared to pay, so the traders could use plenty of these antler buttons. Buttons were something that had come with the cloth clothes of the white people, and by now most of the Miami People had some cloth clothing, so they used buttons with buttonholes to fasten the clothing, instead of the customary ties and toggles. Therefore button-making was a useful skill. She and Cut Finger were good at it. Maconakwa had used to wonder how white people had enough time to make things to sell, and now here she was doing it herself. It was one of the things one learned by being around white people. The Prophet would not approve of this. Nevertheless, she said to Cut Finger:

  “We need the kettle and will pay for it with these. But maybe the next time we can trade enough buttons for a little saw tool such as they sell in the store. Then if we had our own saw, we could make buttons at home whenever we had time. We would not have to pay that old man to cut button pieces for us.”

  The girl kept polishing a button in the wet grit on the stone, but after a while she looked at her mother and said, “If so, how would the old man get buttons?”

  Maconakwa smiled. There were many answers to a question like that, but it pleased her that the girl’s first thought had been for the old man. Cut Finger was always kindhearted.

  Maconakwa twirled the drill and thought of getting a saw, the way her husband had gotten that gun tool today. She paused and glanced over at Deaf Man, watched him using his new iron tool on the musket, and said, “That looks like an awl. Maybe your father should change his name back.” Cut Finger laughed.

  Deaf Man didn’t look up. Clipped Hair smiled but kept watching him. The tool was one that could be put into a slot and twisted until a screw came out and the gun’s spark maker could be taken apart. The jaws that held the flint in place—what the gunsmith called the “cock”—had been loose. Deaf Man had now taken the spark maker apart, discovered that a bent piece of steel inside had come loose, and was fiddling with it, setting the piece in, turning it this way and that, pulling and pushing. He had watched gunsmiths before. “Aha!” he exclaimed softly. “That is how it does it! I have put the life back in this spark maker!” He put the mechanism back into the wooden stock, turned in two little screws, put down the tool, and sat cocking and releasing the flintlock. He was very proud of himself. “E heh!” He lit a pipe to celebrate his accomplishment, gazing proudly at his wife. “If the gunsmith had done that for me, I would owe him something of value. This is good! White men would not like it if all Indians could fix their own guns. This is a power.”

  He watched her for a while, looking contented. Then he took his pipe from his lips and surprised her with a question that had nothing to do with tools or guns. “I have noticed … has it not been a long time since you went away to, ah, the women’s hut?”

  With her eyes down on her work she blushed, smiled, and let him wait. When she looked up, still smiling, she saw in his face that he understood. He slapped his palms together. “Ha-ha!” he cried. “Deaf Man is good at making things!”

  That evening the family ate turtle stew made from a snapping turtle that Clipped Hair had caught, and then sat talking about things they had heard among people around the fort. What they were speaking of was something Maconakwa had first heard of last year, something that happened far away but seemed to be very important. The white chief, Jefferson, who was known personally by Little Turtle, had sent two of his most favored young soldiers westward to cross Turtle Island all the way to the sea where the sun sets. One of them was a brother of the old Town Destroyer general named Clark. The two soldiers had made the journey there and back, taking more than two years and building two forts on the way, and brought back some chiefs of the distant lands to go and meet Jefferson. That was the story. They had completed their return two years ago, but the whites were still talking about it, as if going across land from one place to another were something very remarkable.

  Deaf Man said, “It is told that those two men were soldiers of Wayne, when he made his treaty. I worry about what such men do.”

  Cupped Hair, who had heard the story too, said, “It is told that they went in peace all the way and back.”

  “E heh!” Deaf Man exclaimed. “If white soldiers can thus cross a whole country without fighting, why did they not come to Fort Wayne that way, instead of fighting everybody all the way here?”

  Maconakwa said, “Perhaps they were Quakers, not soldiers, those two.”

  Deaf Man watched her lips and her hands as she said that, and chuckled. But then his face grew grim and his eyes hardened. “That story troubles me,” he said. “I am suspicious of why they went there. I suspect that they made treaties with all the old chiefs of those nations out there so they could now say they own the rest of Turtle Island all the way to the setting sun. Where will our people go when Little Turtle and such men sell to Harrison this little land that is left since this last treaty? Where will we go if the great lands beyond the Missi Sipu were given to Chief Jefferson’s soldiers by the tribes out there?”

  “Husband,” Maconakwa said, “we are not to go anywhere. Remember that Jefferson wants us to stay on small land and learn to be like white men.”

  “He wants us to. But what of those who do not want to? Those who want to live in the old way, as Creator meant us to on this place where he put us and taught us to use?”

  “As the Shawnee Prophet says to do?”

  “E heh. He and his brother Tecumseh will not be tamed like that. Or all those people they are teaching.”

  The youth Clipped Hair had been turning his face back and forth listening to them discuss this. He was a bright-minded young man and always listened and tried to learn. Often he heard things when he went with Deaf Man that Deaf Man could not hear at all. Now he spoke. “Some people talking by the fort today said that Tecumseh will kill any men who go out to mark the treaty lines on the ground. He said the lines are too close to Prophet’s Town. That Indian people should tell the whites that Litt
le Turtle and those others had no right to sell Harrison that land, and the treaty should be ignored.”

  Maconakwa signed all that to her husband. The hand language was hard when it had words like treaty and rights and white men’s names in it. Deaf Man looked long and directly at the young man with a blaze in his eyes, and finally said:

  “If Tecumseh kills any line makers, the white chiefs will send soldiers, and there will surely be war again. You have grown up in peace and have never fought. You do not know war. If it came, would you be with Wells and Little Turtle and stand still here like a white-man pig farmer, or would your heart be with those Shawnee brothers?”

  “I know this much of war,” said Clipped Hair through narrowed lips. “My father was killed beside Turkey Foot at the battle where the trees were fallen down. I was very small then, but I remember when he went and that he never came home. The soldier chief he fought there had the same name as this fort.” He paused, and while he was thinking, Maconakwa and Deaf Man regarded him with appreciation, for he was a young man anyone would have been proud to have as a son; he learned much and thought well and spoke forthrightly. He had done his vision quest, and it revealed to him his Spirit Helper. He was a youth who prayed with fervor and sincerity in ceremony and never mocked, and he was a fast runner and a good horseman and an excellent hunter and trapper. Everything they could have hoped to make of Round One if he had lived to this age, this youth was. Now he looked up, his dark eyes thoughtful in his round face, looked at Deaf Man, and said, “If war comes, Father, which way will you go?”

  Evidently Deaf Man had heard him or read his lips well enough to understand, because he said, “I am not your father; perhaps I shall be soon. But you know that every man does what his heart tells him to do after he has counseled in prayer, not what his father or any other man tells him. I chose long ago to keep fighting the Long Knives, even after we were defeated in that battle at Blown-Down Trees. Now, my sakima Little Turtle has become peaceful and friendly with the Long Knives, and I would not like to be opposite him, because he is still a great man and still tries to protect his People, whether his way feels good to my heart or not. He knows more about the whites than I do, and has talked to Chief Jefferson, and maybe I just do not understand as well what is good for us. Another thing: