“How can old ones bear so much!” Maconakwa exclaimed. “So, then the soldiers suffer much too?”
“Very bad. They were fools to come out in the winter. Probably when they started this way the weather was good. Who would expect a cold this deep to come down?”
“If soldiers stayed home, they would not be suffering.”
“This,” the youth said, “is their punishment for coming to attack people who were not their enemies.”
“This, and the battle yesterday,” she said. “You were in that?”
“My first one. E heh.”
“It was a terrible battle, eh?”
“E heh. The soldiers have good guns, many. Many spinning-bullet guns, not muskets. They sing as they go by, and you understand the song.” Now his eyes were shining.
“So says my husband, who has heard many. Tell me, young Autumn, do you know the Lenapeh woman Numaitut, the Minnow, of Metosinah’s Town? A widow, with a daughter younger than mine.”
“Ne she. Is she among the hostages?”
“I believe them to be. The mother and the daughter.”
“It is bad. The captives suffer even more than the soldiers.”
“E heh,” she said. “And if suffering is punishment, as you say, Minnow’s punishment is for what?” She sighed and shook her head and got up, thanking him again and wishing him a smooth path. From somewhere I feel Cut Finger watching me, she thought. She will want to know if he asked me anything about her. She’ll be disappointed. Eh.
Then she sat back down near Acorn Top, to wait until the old woman could recover enough to talk, hoping she could tell her something about Minnow among the hostages.
But at sundown Acorn Top crossed to the Other Side World. Her breath quit. She was already almost a skeleton.
Maconakwa got up weary and sad to go and tell Autumn Brouillette. But he had already gone back up the river to rejoin the scouts and follow the army.
That night, Maconakwa lay between her husband and daughters in the lean-to, and he fell into exhausted sleep at once. She lay praying fervent thanks for his life. The warmth of her family’s close bodies in the bedding soothed her and she was sinking under her own exhaustion, but her mind was flooding with thoughts, reminding her to pray for the spirits of those killed, the safety of the captives, Minnow in particular, and that somehow there would be enough food to keep the People alive through the winter.
Almost into sleep, she began thinking of her daughter Cut Finger and this young man Brouillette, called Autumn. She could see their lives coming toward a convergence that could not be stopped even if there were some reason to stop it. That youth had been like a warrior against the soldiers. But Autumn was not really a warrior. Like the older Brouillette, he would probably be a trader, a person between white and red people, perhaps a man who wrote words and numbers on paper to keep track of goods and money, as she had seen trading-post people do.
He may not be like that, though, she thought. His heart seems red. If Cut Finger marries him, perhaps she would fare better in her life because the white people with their money trade keep coming, and they will surely change everything to their way.
And she is part white-blood by me and he is part white-blood by his father, and so any children they had would be less Miami. That boy is kind and has been brave, but I wonder if he ever went out and sought his vision and found his Spirit Helper.
Or does he perhaps believe what the Black Robes teach, as so many of the French-name ones do? Or does he believe a bit of our way and a bit of theirs, making all his beliefs weaker? People weaken when their beliefs weaken.
What will we become as my daughters become women? Maybe, she thought, that will depend on what comes of this war. And wars after this. I wonder if we can stay strong enough to be who we have been.
The fire outside the shelter blurred with her sleepiness; now and then a silhouette of a person passed before the firelight. In a camp there was always somebody up, especially a camp where there were dead to grieve for and wounded to heal.…
She heard intense voices. Something was happening. She fought up from the heavy weariness and rose on an elbow. A few people were moving quickly toward the riverbank. Then they were coming back, voices excited. They were helping two stumbling, ragged, frosty apparitions out of the night. Maconakwa inhaled a gasp and exhaled a groan. With pain sparking in knees and ankles, she stood up, waking her husband and daughters as she disturbed their covers. She called across the clearing:
“Minnow!”
Maconakwa limped through the stupefying cold toward the woman and her daughter—or perhaps their ghost spirits, if those were actually what she was seeing.
Fed on hot broth, fingers and toes rubbed with sumac-leaf tea, bundled up warm in hides, at length Minnow could tell them:
“The soldiers grew too frozen to handle their guns.…” She hesitated, sniffling, thinking long. “When they rode, their feet froze worse. So slow … but their leaders wanted them to hurry. We told them, ‘Hurry! Tecumseh follows!’ Oh, that frightened them! Ha ha!”
“How did you get away, sister?” Maconakwa asked. She was working raccoon fat into Minnow’s face to soothe the chapped skin and make blood flow to her skin. There was no bear fat anymore. There had not been bears for a long time.
“The army stopped often to rest. Make fires. Everyone sat … We lay down in the snow. Soldiers were at the fire, not watching well … We covered ourselves with snow, finally even our faces. In bright day we did this. We heard them shout to go and then they moved along. A horse stepped so close to my head, it pulled some of my hair out.… When we heard no more army, we got up … saw their backs far away. Warmed ourselves a little at the fires they left. Then we turned this way and walked. Sometimes we crossed the ice where the river bends, to make a straighter walk here.…” She wheezed and winced. “That is how we are back today instead of tomorrow.”
Maconakwa stared into the sunken, glittering eyes a long time, thinking. Then she said, “Sister …” speaking softly, as if to herself more than Minnow. “You lift my heart. I had been worrying, whether our people are strong enough for what yet comes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
July 1813
Mississinewa Valley
There could not have been a more pleasant way to pass such a hot day. Maconakwa waded naked in the clear water among the white flowers and arrow-shaped leaves, holding and pulling the dugout canoe with one hand, groping the mucky marsh bottom with her toes. Usually she could break the tubers off with her toes, and when they floated to the surface, toss them into the canoe. Some she would have to bend down and twist off by hand, stooping and immersing herself as far as her shoulders, so even though the midsummer sun beat down on her head and shoulders, she could remain cool, and when deerflies came to bite her wet skin, she could just slide down in the water.
The boat had become a floating forage basket. Its bottom was heaped with arrow-leaf tubers, pond-lily roots, cattail shoots, a catfish almost the size of her leg, and a heap of mussels. In the marshes and these shallow streams she could find enough food to sustain her family until the corn and gardens were ready for harvest. And then there would be the raspberries and currants and blackberries, and she had lived long enough in this valley to know where to find them all. But it was in the water that she preferred to forage, staying cool, avoiding the scratches and stings and the trickling sweats. Sometimes Cut Finger would come with her in the canoe to gather and fish, but this day the girl was back at the village, watching over Yellow Leaf and learning from one of Palonswah’s sisters how to make dyes. And so this day, Maconakwa was in the kind of solitude that mothers in a tribe rarely have, and she was reveling in it. She did not have to talk, to guide, to answer questions, to watch all around for her children’s safety. It was quiet without the talk, and she could think and see, making her mind as big as the sky or as small as an insect. She paused now and watched dragonflies and damselflies cruise through the air above the arrow leaf. Two damselflies flew by
connected together, their dark bodies slim as grass stalks. They must be mating, she thought. Imagine doing that while flying in the air! It was one of the strangest thoughts she had ever had, and when she envisioned herself doing that with Deaf Man drifting through the air over the marsh, it was so funny and exhilarating that she nearly laughed aloud.
Deaf Man was still a husband of unflagging desire, even after all these years. She was glad of that. She reckoned her age at about forty summers now, and the weight of her breasts had pulled them down so that now they swung instead of jounced, and her belly after four childbirths was no longer smooth or flat. But she was still lean and strong and narrow at the waist, and could clench her inner parts in such a way as to make his eyes widen with delight when they were coupling.
But her hopes of giving Deaf Man a son diminished with each moon. Maybe he had had the seed for only two sons in him, and those she had borne him already, which Creator had chosen to take back. If no son comes, she thought, it is because the Master of Life, who is wiser than the wisest of us, does not think this is what we need at this time. Perhaps because of the wars. In the meantime, she and her husband could enjoy what they did, which often was so thrilling that she did feel as if they were soaring in air, like those two mating on the wing. Then someday all her moon-bloods would stop and she would no longer be fertile. That had happened already to Minnow, and her own time would come. We too are ripening crops, she thought.
These things passed through her mind while she stood in the water listening to the whine and rasp of summer insects and watched the linked damselflies vanish among the reeds and cattails. These were the ways one’s mind could wander when one was in solitude. It was good to be away from children now and then. But only for a little while. Just a morning or afternoon away from them would make her eager to see them again, to know they were safe and well. Always in the back of the mind was the war danger.
It had been seven moons since the soldiers came down this valley and destroyed the towns in that time of terrible cold. The towns had been rebuilt. Most of the war had moved off beyond Fort Wayne in the northeast and down the Maumee Sipu. It was said that the Long Knife soldier chief Harrison had built a huge fort at the rapids, and Tecumseh and the English Redcoats had surrounded and besieged it. Tecumseh’s warriors had destroyed a whole army of reinforcements trying to reach the fort, but so far as was known, Harrison still held the fort. Maconakwa believed she knew just where that fort stood; she could remember portaging around those rapids almost twenty summers ago, with Flicker, Tuck Horse, and Minnow—little Minnow carrying that big canoe up the path all by herself. Not far from where the battle of the Blown-Down Woods had occurred. She could see it in memory.
Twenty summers, she thought, and it is still the same fighting: the Redcoats and the red men fighting against the bluecoats. What a terrible foolishness. So much pain and death!
If only the Americans would stay in place and leave everybody alone, she thought. But they never stop coming.
At least they had taken their war away from this valley, for a while. Many bands had gone to remote camps, to stay out of war’s way.
Beyond the curtain of cattails she heard a burst of noise, as if someone had passed wind. She glanced up and saw a covey of little birds scattering into the air. The sound had only been their wings.
But what had flushed them out like that?
She felt a shiver of apprehension. Here she was alone, at a distance from her town. In the canoe was a knife she used in foraging, but no other weapon. Those birds had been frightened by something.
She started to ease the canoe back toward the creek and into the river, to start back for the village. She had gathered plenty and she was not comfortable here now.
Then she heard a noise she knew well: a horse blowing. It too sounded like a fart, but she knew it was a horse’s mouth making that noise.
No one who knew this valley would choose to ride through this marshy ground, she thought. Perhaps a horse has strayed.
So she left the canoe afloat in the arrow leaf and waded toward and into the cattails, being careful not to splash water or rustle leaves. She almost cried out when a thick-bodied, dark-banded water snake came slithering past her knee. Frogs leaped, splashing into the water. She did not know whether she or the horse was alarming them.
Then, through the smell of mud and marsh vegetation, she detected an odor that made shivers run down from her scalp:
Soldier smells!
Crouching, she eased deeper into the cattails.
Something red caught her eye, high up, moving. It was not a redbird. She rose to look over the leaves.
She glimpsed for an instant the dyed-crimson, deer-hair roach headdress of a warrior, perhaps ten yards away, passing to her right, and then it was out of view. In the instant she saw the warrior’s profile and bald head, she thought she noticed yellow paint in front of the ear.
Then the soldier smells were stronger and she heard sucking sounds. Rancid sweat. Hooves lifting out of the muck. Something glinted in the sunlight, something metal. More frogs leaped and more birds were darting over. Then she saw a tall, blue soldier hat, a face, another, then many more. The whole wetland beyond the cattail curtain seemed to be moving. Horses blew and she heard men’s voices. She shrank down and edged backward, heart thudding.
It was an army. The warrior ahead must have been one of their scouts. It was known that some of Black Hoof’s Shawnees and other treaty Indians were riding with the bluecoats because their own tribesman, Tecumseh, was their enemy.
Easing down into the water, she supped through the arrow leaf toward the canoe. Soon the water was to her chin and she saw the low horizontal shape of the vessel just ahead. She grasped the line at its prow and pulled gently, guiding it toward the creek channel, into the shade of cottonwoods, toward the river.
Only when she was in the green water of the Mississinewa did she ease back alongside, reach with one arm across to the far gunwale, and pull herself into the craft. She knelt in the bottom of the vessel only long enough to tie her skirt around her waist, then grabbed up the paddle, dug it deep into the water, and propelled the craft downstream.
She paddled as hard and fast as she could without splashing. She was thankful that the village was downstream so she did not have to push the heavy craft against the current.
The river was narrow, overarched by limbs of the gigantic sycamores, cottonwoods, and willows. It was like gliding down a green tunnel in some places, broken now and then by dappled sunlight, brushy, sunny glades, and overgrown sites of former villages. She kept the paddle silent, not letting it swash or even dribble, and scanned the riverbank for scouts or soldiers or any sign of their presence. If they had skirted the marsh and gotten onto the river path ahead of her, she would not be able to paddle down to the town without being seen. She was certain she was ahead of the soldiers, but not so sure about their scouts.
A heron wading along the left bank suddenly raised its wings and took off, flying downriver. She had no way of knowing whether it had been startled by her approach or by someone on the river path. She peered all along the shoreline, trying to see through foliage; she listened for hoof steps and horse noises and voices with all her concentration. She paddled hard, silent.
I think I am ahead of them, she thought. I can keep ahead of walking horses, I believe. But not ahead of running horses.
May they be behind me. May they be walking.
She would not have to be very far ahead of them to give a warning in time. The people were very practiced at evacuating ahead of Town Destroyers.
If they were ahead of her, though, she knew she would have to abandon the canoe and run down the riverbank with her warning. She would hate to abandon the canoe with all this food in it. The soldiers would, as usual, slash and burn all the crops, and these gatherings would be needed.
Is there no end to soldiers coming? she wondered, with such a knot of frustration and indignation in her throat that she began weeping even as she pad
dled. The languid, shady, sun-dappled beauty of the rivercourse swam through her tears.
She was ahead of the soldiers. The People cleared out quickly but without panic. Deaf Man sent scouts up the river, and messengers down the river to warn the other towns.
The scouts came back reporting that there were too many soldiers to even try to ambush them or resist. So the people of the village went up a creek to hide. That night they watched the fires glow.
She had lost count of the times she had seen her homes burned.
When the army was gone, the people returned to the ashes and began rebuilding their huts and cabins. There was nothing to do but rebuild them so they would have shelter in the coming cold months and hope the Long Knives would not come through again this year.
All the unripe corn, beans, and squash, the Three Sacred Sisters, had been cut down, trampled, and burned.
In following days, messengers began coming. The town burners had been everywhere. They had burned all the Miami towns on this river, and on the Eel, and along the great Wabash Sipu. K’tippecanuh, the site of the Prophet’s holy town years ago, had been burned again, its third time.
The chiefs presumed that the reason for all this was to crush the Wabash Indians so Harrison would not have to worry about them on his flank while he went north against Tecumseh and the British. Deaf Man said, “I look around me and I see that my People are beaten. This time we did not even fight the soldiers. We moved back and let them do what they came for. Now I fear that will be the way of it from now on. The Miami are warriors no more. Jefferson and Little Turtle wanted us to become farmers and traders and herders like the whites. I see that is all that is left for us—unless Tecumseh and the Redcoats can defeat Harrison in the north.”
The message came late in the Hunter’s Moon, while red leaves fell.
Tecumseh is dead.
He had been killed by Harrison’s army in Canada, while trying to protect the tails of the Redcoats as they ran away from the blue-coats. The British had betrayed their red allies once more.
The Red Heart Page 56