The Red Heart

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “Ehhh!” Minnow exclaimed. “This is a boldness that is needed here!”

  The Shawnee walked swiftly toward the arbor, leading a small group of proud, lean warriors, while a few remained at the edge of the clearing, holding the horses on which they had arrived.

  Maconakwa noted that Tecumseh’s brother Open Door, the Prophet, was not among them. Then all her attention, like that of everyone else, turned upon the Shawnee war chief, this renegade who was held largely to blame for the fear of war throughout this country. She had not seen him since six summers ago at the Prophet’s Town, when he had stood beside his brother who was making the sun darken. As then, he made her heart quicken.

  He was not richly attired, as the Council chiefs were, but a grandness seemed to emanate from the natural power of his being, like the beauty of a panther. Though he was of middle years by now, perhaps five years older than she, he was tight-skinned, every muscle and cord of sinew clearly defined as he strode in. He wore no tunic, or even leggings, just breechcloth and moccasins, silver bands around his upper arms, a necklace of large bear claws, a silver dangler between his nostrils, and one eagle plume hanging from a braid in his shiny long hair. He carried a pipe tomahawk in his left hand, its long handle stem resting along his forearm, and except for that and a slim sheath knife hanging in the middle of his chest, he was unarmed—even though he must have known that in this Council sat several chiefs who believed he should be captured or assassinated. On his face there was neither fear nor severity. Though he strode in as straight and purposefully as an arrow, his face showed the pleasure of approaching men he respected, men who had been his comrades in war. Though he had an eagle’s visage, when he went up among them and extended his hand toward Little Turtle, his glittering eyes and white-toothed smile made it clear why, as it was reputed, his companionship was enjoyed and cherished by everyone, even those who were at cross purposes with him. The chiefs under the arbor, though they must now be appalled and alarmed that he had come uninvited to their Council, stood and greeted him as if they could not help it.

  Maconakwa felt uplifted by the sight of him though she knew his arrival meant trouble, and she laughed and exclaimed aloud with pleasure when Tecumseh took Deaf Man’s hand and then clapped him on the shoulder. He said a few words, and then the pipe was lighted and passed again, which she understood to mean that Tecumseh himself would have words to add to the Council. There was no denying the fair-mindedness of Little Turtle, or the hospitality of Osage, whose town this was.

  But it became apparent at once that however much they liked Tecumseh, they did not like what he was doing. One by one the chiefs got up and scolded Tecumseh for his continued defiance of American friendship offerings. They chided him for trying to lure Black Hoof and his peaceful Shawnees away from the Long Knives; they chided him for rejecting an offer of amnesty from Harrison; they blamed his harsh words to Harrison for provoking the governor’s march into the middle Wabash Sipu country. They blamed him for everything that troubled them.

  Tecumseh sat silently listening to all this censure, showing neither shame nor irritation, only shaking his head once or twice. When at last they had finished heaping upon him every bit of blame they could think of, and the translations had trailed off, Tecumseh arose and stood so that he could address the chiefs but also be seen and heard by the hundreds of onlookers. A young man stood up beside him, apparently to be his translator.

  “Grandfathers, Fathers, brothers,” he began. “The Master of Life, He Who Creates By Thinking, has heard my prayers for this day, and he has pictured me being allowed to speak my heart to you, and that is why it is now so. I have given you my pipe, so that whenever you look at it, you will be reminded that I came here this day to speak the truth to you.

  “People of the Miami, of the Potawatomi, the Lenapeh! My people have long been your friends. Together we have fought the peoples of the Longhouse; together we have stood against the invasions of the Long Knives. Now, though you have signed treaties with the Long Knives and I have refused to do so because of my distrust of them, my heart still embraces the happiness and safety of your peoples. We differ only in seeing how the path to happiness goes.

  “I have made long study of the treaties made by white men with our peoples. I can tell you every promise made in every one of those treaties. I have talked with the red men who signed those treaties, and I know what they were told by the white men who wrote them, and also I have read the treaties and have seen what is actually written on them. Those are not always the same, as the signers would have known if they could read the marking language on those treaty sheets.

  “But even when the promises have been clearly understood, they have always been broken by the white men! I could stand here and count those broken promises until your ears would be numb and your hearts weeping for all you did not mean to give away, but did.”

  Minnow’s knuckle nudged Maconakwa’s knee, and Maconakwa saw her nodding vigorously.

  Tecumseh went on: “Fathers and brothers! Not long ago nations from the East were pushed into Ohio by whites who broke treaties.

  “Now we are in your land, this country the whites call ‘Indiana,’ which means the ‘Land of the Indians.’ But even the Land of the Indians grows smaller every season, because of more treaties, made by Land Stealer Harrison, and signed by many of you, the very ones here in this shade with me! Many of you signed treaties with that invader! I know each one of you who did!” He glared from one of them to the next, and they glowered and squirmed. Then he continued, in a voice that Maconakwa seemed to feel as well as hear, as one feels storm weather coming.

  “That great Land Stealer, Harrison, whom you call your friend even though he is the worst enemy your people ever had, that liar Harrison marched his army into our lands that he has not even stolen yet, and burned the holy town and endangered the women and children who had come there only to worship the Creator! Some of your warriors died when he marched in!

  “You have stood here just now and blamed me for that attack on my own town! You say he came and attacked it because I have been urging war on him. But you know in your hearts that is not so! I have told my people to step back from war! I said, even if you must abandon a place that is threatened, abandon it for a while and step back out of the Long Knives’ range. I said, wait until all red men can stand together, and then we can go see the white men’s Great Father in Washington, and all speak to him together, telling him not to take any more of our lands, of which we have so little remaining.

  “But,” he said, and suddenly thrust a finger toward a Potawatomi chief, the Catfish, “though I had never told my people to war against the whites, my words were turned upside down by a pretended chief of the Potawatomi, who told Harrison I was provoking war! There he is, right before me! This man is a Bad Bird flying with lies in his mouth—as well as a deceiver who signs away land that was never his!”

  It had already been seen often in years past that the Catfish was afraid of Tecumseh, and again this time he just hunched into his shoulders and looked down.

  “Those men who put their hands to such treaties should have their hands cut off!” Tecumseh declared in a voice so strong and clear that all the hundreds could hear it, and they gasped, muttered, whooped.

  “But now it is too late to try to keep peace with the Long Knives,” Tecumseh exclaimed. “They now seek to start a war with the English in Canada, because they have long wanted the lands of Canada too. You know that; that is why you are here with your war chiefs standing ready to Council about it.

  “You consider standing neutral in the war that comes, or, worse, helping the Long Knives. Some of you here, I know, believe you should instead stand with the Redcoats against the bluecoats. Come with me, then! Have no fear of your old tame chiefs! Come fight our enemy!”

  That invitation stirred so much uproar in the crowd that Little Turtle rose, almost purple in the face, and exclaimed: “It is bad for you to come here to our Council where you were not invited to come, and
ask our warriors to fight our friends! Are you through speaking?”

  “After one plea, respected Father: I wish we people of Turtle Island, all the red people, were of one heart. I ask you to clear the smoke from your eyes and see that we all together have just one enemy, and he is the Long Knife. I have tapelot, great love, for the Miami people and the Potawatomi and the Lenapeh. Because of my love for them I wish you could see clearly as you used to before they blinded you with their favors. I warn you that when the war between the Redcoats and the bluecoats begins, Harrison will not care whether you are neutral or not. As the Long Knives have always done, they will run over all the people just because they are Indians.

  “I have finished speaking. I hope your warriors will come with me as I leave!”

  And when he left, a few warriors did rise and follow, leaving a silence behind. With racing heart Maconakwa looked at Deaf Man to see if he would get up and go too, hoping both ways. He did not get up. He was looking down. She wondered whether he had heard Tecumseh say “Come with me.”

  She looked at Minnow, whose eyes were ablaze with pride. She looked at Cut Finger, who had stopped gazing at the beautiful métis boy at least long enough to watch Tecumseh go. Maconakwa as a woman understood, as a girl could not, how Tecumseh was more beautiful than that boy. But he was a frightening man. Nothing around him could rest. Now, she knew, there would be no avoiding war.

  And now the Council would have to decide war or peace with Tecumseh’s thrilling challenge troubling them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  December 17, 1812

  Metosinah’s Town, Mississinewa River

  Maconakwa sat by the fire in Minnow’s lodge and enjoyed the luxury of having her thick red hair combed by her friend, who was using a large, strong, trading-store horn comb.

  The two women had not seen each other since Spring Council. Though their towns were not far apart, on the same river, Minnow had been living with Lenapeh people here in Metosinah’s Town since her husband’s death in the Prophet’s Town battle, and easing back into her Lenapeh ways, had missed the rest of the year’s Miami ceremonies. She groused that Metosinah was not fighting against the Long Knives, but she did not feel neutral.

  Minnow was beginning to look old; so much weathering and grief had been visited upon her that her skin was traced all over by fine lines. But her little body was as hard and sinewy as ever under the thin brown skin, and her hands were so strong that now and then Maconakwa would wince and yip when Minnow dragged the comb relentlessly through a tangle.

  Minnow chuckled and said softly, “Quiet. You will wake up our girls. One would think I am torturing you.” Their daughters, who felt they were born to be friends, had whispered late in their blankets the night before. Now they, and little Yellow Leaf, were still asleep. It was very early on a bitterly cold morning. When Maconakwa had awakened to make water a little while ago, the first predawn light of a cloudless morning had shown her frost floating in the air. The river was beginning to freeze along the banks.

  Most of the men of all the Mississinewa villages were out in the snowy countryside hunting. There was little food anywhere. The war between the English and the Long Knives had brought Long Knife Town Destroyers again and again into the Wabash Valley, and as Tecumseh had warned in Spring Council, they had burned towns and crops without regard to whether the peoples were neutral or not.

  As Minnow had said, hissing between her teeth: “Little Turtle’s last gift to his people was to make them helpless, making them promise not to fight Long Knives.”

  Little Turtle was in his grave, lying under the ground with his Washington sword. He had died two moons after Spring Council, of the disease that had given him so much pain for so long. He was paid much tribute by people of many tribes, both his old friends and enemies, but some of the enemies had satisfied themselves by noting how appropriate it was that the disease, gout, was a white man disease which he probably got by his heart having turned white. They would make this joke and then look ashamed.

  All through the late summer and fall the war had flamed and thundered through the valley of the Wabash Sipu, from Fort Wayne almost down to Vincennes. A fort named after Harrison, built on an old sacred place called High Ground, which the French called Terre Haute, had been surrounded and attacked by Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and Winnebago warriors, who had burned it severely but failed to take it from the soldiers inside. Fort Wayne had been unsuccessfully attacked and besieged by Winamac and Five Medals, who had turned against the Americans; Harrison marched up from Ohio and broke that siege, and in revenge sent armies out to burn all the Indian towns anywhere near Fort Wayne and destroy all the crops. In burning Five Medals’ town on the Elk Hart River, the soldiers had robbed and defiled the burial place of an old medicine woman, and on their return march many had become very sick, one strong young soldier suddenly just falling dead.

  “After that,” Minnow had snickered in grim pleasure while speaking of it, “perhaps whatever other treachery those wapsituk do, they will leave our revered dead to rest undisturbed!”

  “Perhaps,” Maconakwa had replied, “but perhaps not. At the Place of the Flints up there”—she pointed toward the northeast—“the bluecoats plundered and burned the funeral hut of the old chief who had not been buried yet.”

  “May those soldiers die sick too,” Minnow had hissed, “and may their spirits be afraid forever in the Other Side World, wherever their Other Side World is. It should be in the ditch where one empties the bowels!” Minnow’s contempt for Long Knives was a thing to behold, but it was good to hear strong thoughts expressed in the old familiar Lenapeh tongue again, even when the thoughts were not pleasant.

  But this morning Minnow had not talked about war. This was a rare time of quiet, warm friendship in a well-heated, snug wikwam, surrounded by an outdoors too deep in snow and too frozen down for armies to travel in. The combing of Maconakwa’s tresses was a luxury now that the tangles were out, and made cascades of pleasure flow down from her scalp through her shoulders, almost putting her in a trance. Now that she was receiving this rare treatment, the touch of a woman whom she loved like a sister, she could understand why at home her daughter liked it—almost begged for it—and understood too why her husband Deaf Man liked her to rub on his shoulders or thighs for long times when he was tired. It seemed that it was usually she who was combing or stroking them, rather than being combed by Cut Finger or stroked by Deaf Man—except of course when he wanted to warm her up to go inside her. She murmured that to Minnow now, and heard her chuckle.

  “E heh! If you complain about that, I might just take this scalp of red hair! Heh heh! Be glad!” They laughed softly. They listened to the girls’ sleep-breathing and the fluttering of the flames in the fire ring. Down by the river they could hear the slow rhythm of unshod hooves as some hunters went up the bank, perhaps three or four. The town was so still. There was no wind and probably almost everyone in the village was still in bed or indoors making breakfast out of whatever little they might have. This was a kind of moment that sometimes would make Maconakwa tingle with amazement, that somehow the Creator in the midst of hardship and fear would give creatures—two-legged or four-legged creatures—moments of such sweetness and comfort in their homes and burrows that they must be reminded of his presence and generosity. By these granted moments, she felt, the Master of Life keeps us from despairing. She had never known of a woman as fiery and tough as Minnow—nor one so selfless and kind. Now Minnow murmured close by her ear, still being quiet for their daughters’ sake, “Do you know, sister, that here on this part of your head, the scalp lock place, you have a patch of hair that is lighter red than all the rest?”

  Of course she knew. From the beginning she had been told of it by her birth mother, by her white sisters, by Neepah, by Flicker. “You have mentioned it to me before, sister.”

  “E heh! Perhaps I did. But I never told you that it is growing gray faster than the rest of your hair. I never mentioned that because I never loo
k at you from up here behind. Yes, it is more gray than red here.”

  “Hm! I was just thinking what a nice moment this is, and you say in my ear that I grow old.”

  “Heh! It is not so bad. I have more white now than black. We women go through much. A man earns an eagle feather, and for the same surviving a woman earns a white hair. How great we are, you would presume by looking at our white-hair decorations!”

  Maconakwa smiled. But then a bittersweet twinge went through her, evoked by the thought of silvering red hair. She said, “You have heard, Wild Potato was killed by the Potawatomi at Chicagou, in a fight by the great lake?” She remembered seeing at Spring Council that his hair had gone a little silvery. Tecumseh’s allies had killed him.

  “Ai. And that they cut his heart out and divided it to eat. They wanted some of his power. No matter. He had gone back around to white and it is better that he is dead.”

  There was so much to remember about Wells—how that other red-haired one had haunted her life with strange feelings of who she was and where she stood in the world. She knew all about him turning white, but in a way she was sorry he was dead. She said, flushing, “Would it be better if I were dead, as I am a white?”

  Minnow slapped her hard above the ear. “Such talk! You are not wapsini!” And after a while she added, more kindly, “Only some of your hair is wapsi.” Then she leaned forward over the back of Maconakwa’s shoulder and pressed her cheek against hers. “Come, sister. Let us see what we can make for our children to eat from a ring of dried squash I have saved. I pray our hunters have got at least a deer last—” She stopped and listened.

  It took a moment to identify the rapid, thudding sounds that they had both noticed. It was the quick beating of hoofbeats coming fast: running horses out on the snowy, frozen ground.