Jordan County

by Shelby Foote

  Desecration! his forefathers cried. Pollution!

  So they fought: the strangers in armor, man and horse looking out through slits in the steel — of which he says rusty fragments survive in the long-house to commemorate the battle where the Spaniards (he says) wore blisters on their palms with excess of killing — swinging their swords and lances wearily and standing in blood to the rowels of their spurs: and at last retreated, marched away to the south, and were seen no more.

  Then all was quiet; the young ones might have believed their fathers dreamed it, except for the rusting bits of armor and the horse skulls raised on poles in the long-house yard. Then came other white men in canoes, wearing not steel but robes of black with ropes about their waists, and bearing their slain god on a cross of sticks, whose blood ran down from a gash in his side: saying, Bow down; worship; your gods are false; This is the true God! and sang strange songs, swinging utensils that sprinkled and smoked, and partook of the wafer and a thin blood-colored liquid hot to the throat; then went away. But the Choctaws kept their gods, saying: How should we forsake the one that made us of spit and straw and a dry handful of dust and sent us here out of Nanih Waiya? How should we exchange Him for one who let himself be stretched on sticks with nails through the palms of his hands and feet, a headdress of thorns, pain in his face, and a spearpoint gash in his side where the life ran out?

  Q. Was he here to blaspheme? — for his eyes rolled back showing only the whites and he chanted singsong fashion. Answered nay, he but told it as it was in the dark time; he was the Singer, as all his fathers had been. And continued:

  Then came others down the years, also in boats — all came by the river since Soto’s time — but bearing neither the arquebus nor the Cross: bringing goods to trade, beads of colored stuff and printed cloth and magic circles no bigger than the inside of a hand, where sunlight flashed and a man could see himself as in unspillable water; for which, all these, the traders sought only the skins of animals in return. Now of all the creatures of the field, only certain ones were worthy of being hunted by a man: the bear, the deer, the broad-wing turkey — the rest were left for boys. Yet the traders prized highest the pelt of a creature not even a boy would hunt: the beaver: and this caused his people to feel a certain contempt. Lo, too, these strangers placed an undue value on women, for they would force or woo a man’s wife and lie with her, not asking the husband’s permission or agreeing beforehand on a price or an exchange, and though they were liberal with their gifts when the thing was done, there began to be not only contempt but also hard feelings in the breasts of his people.

  So much was legend: he but told it as his father before him told it, having it from the father before him, and so on back. Yet what follows, he says, he saw with his own eyes and heard with his ears; God be his witness. And continued, no longer with his eyes rolled, speaking singsong, but as one who saw and heard and now reported (making once more, in attest of truth, the Cross upon his breastbone):

  Two summers back, in the late heat of the year, spokesmen arrived from many sleeps to the south, near the great salt river. Three they were, the sons of chiefs, tall men sound of wind and limb, sent forth by their fathers, saying: We have a thing to impart. Will our brothers hear? That night they rested and were feasted in the long-house, and runners went out to bring in the chiefs. Next day as the sun went bleeding beyond the river all assembled on the sacred mound, the leaders and the singers (himself being one) and the three came forward, lean with travel, clean-favored and handsome in feathers and paint, upright as became the sons of chiefs, and the tallest spoke. It is transcribed.

  — Brothers: peace. We bring a message and a warning. May you hear and heed and so be served. The white ones speak with forked tongues, no matter what crown they claim their great chief wears beyond the sea. We bring a warning of calamity. It will be with you as it was with us, for they will do as they have done. Thus. First they came boasting of their gods and seeking a yellow metal in their various languages: Or, they call it, or Oro. Then, in guile, they exchanged valuables for the worthless pelts of animals, calling us Brother, and we believed and answered likewise, Brother. And they lived among us and shared our pipe and all was well between us. So we thought.

  — Then, lo, they began to ask a strange thing of us, seeking to buy the land. Sell us the land, they said: Sell us the land. And we told them, disguising our horror: No man owns the land; take and live on it; it is lent you for your lifetime; are we not brothers? And they appeared satisfied. They put up houses of plank and iron, like their ships, and sent back for their women. Soon they were many; the bear and the deer were gone (— they had seen and known in their hearts, without words; but we, being men with words, were blind) and the white men sent forth laws and set up courts, saying This shalt thou do and This shalt thou not do, and punishment followed hard upon offense, both the whip and the branding iron and often the rope. And we said, Can this be? Are we not brothers, to dwell in one land? And they answered, Yea: but this is Law.

  — Nor was it long till the decree came forth, in signs on paper nailed to the walls of houses and even on trees, and the chiefs were called into the courts to hear it read. Go forth, the judges read: Go forth from the land, you and your people, into the north or beyond the river; for this land now is ours. And our fathers spoke, no longer trying to disguise the horror: How can this be? Are we not brothers? How can we leave this land, who were sent here out of Nanih Waiya to dwell in it forever down through time? And they answered, Howsomever.

  — So it was and is with us, for our people are collecting their goods and preparing for the journey out. So too will it be with you. And soon; for this was all in our own time, and we are young.

  I have spoken, the tallest said, and rejoined the circle. The chiefs sat smoking. Then another of the young men spoke, asking permission to retire to the long-house to sleep, for they had far to go tomorrow. And it was granted; they left, all three; and still the chiefs sat smoking.

  The moon rose late, red and full to the rear of where the chiefs sat passing the pipe from hand to hand. But no one spoke, neither the chiefs on the mound nor the people below, their faces back-tilted, looking up. Then one did speak — Loshumitubbe, the oldest chief, with the hawk beak and thin gray hair that his ears showed through, a great killer in his day, and lines in his face like earth where rain has run: saying, Yea, the moon be my witness; we have offended, we have strayed. This is not the cunning of the white man. This is anger from the gods. They want it as it was in the old time.

  So saying, he made a quick, downward motion with the pipe; it might have been a hatchet or a knife. Some among them understood, the older chiefs and the singers — he being one — and nodded their heads, saying Yea, or smoked in silence. And down at the base of the mound the people waited, faces pale in the moonlight, looking up. After a term the chiefs spoke in turn, grave-faced, drawing out the words, some for and some against. By morning it was decided; they came down off the mound with their minds made up.

  Runners were sent one sleep to the north: five they were, strung out along the river bank, a hard run apart. Three weeks the people waited. It was cold and then it faired, the air hazy, leaves bright red and yellow though not yet brown; it was nearing the time of the corn dance, when a man’s heart should rejoice for the fruits of the earth. And the people said to one another behind their hands, Can this thing be? (for such had not been done since far before the time of the man Soto; not even in that hard time, he says, was such a thing considered) but others answered, not behind their hands but openly, proud to have gone back: Yea, can and shall: Loshumitubbe says it.

  Then came one running, the nearest of the five posted along the river bank, running with his legs unstrung, and knelt before Loshumitubbe, unable to speak but holding up two fingers. Then he could speak, panting the words between breaths: Two come by water. Trappers, O chief. In buckskin.

  Here was a halt, the dinner hour being come. Next morning, again at the house Royal, immediately I, the sai
d Governor, together with the aforesaid witnesses of my company, commanded to appear before me Chisahahoma, whom I found a prisoner in the care of the guard as before and still in bonds, who once more subscribed and swore the oath and resumed as follows, confronting the witnesses and Benito Courbiere, scrivener:

  That night in the long-house they played the drum and painted, himself among them. Next morning they waited in the willows down at the river bank, again himself among them. For a long time, nothing. The sun went past the overhead; they waited. Then two together pointed, raising each an arm: Lo: for the trappers were rounding the bend in a canoe. Still they waited, knee-deep in the water, screened by willows, watching. The trappers held near to bank, seeking signs of game — one tall and slim; he sat in the stern, and the other short and fat; he was the older. They wondered if they could catch them, for his people had only dugouts: when suddenly the man in the bow stopped paddling. Lance! he shouted, and pointed directly at the willow clump. So he and his people bent their backs to launch out in pursuit. But the one in the stern changed sides with his paddle and the canoe swung crossways to the current, approaching. A sign from the gods, his people thought; their hearts grew big with elation. And when the two were within arm’s length they took them so quickly they had not even time to reach for their rifles. Truly a sign from the gods! his people cried, and some began to leap and scream, squeezing their throats with their hands to make it shriller.

  So the two were bound at the water’s edge and brought up to the town, walking hunched for their wrists were strapped with rawhide at the crotch, one hand coming through from the rear and one from the front so they could not stand upright, though the tall one almost could; his arms were long. They were marched the length of the street, the smell of fear coming strong off the short one. Bent forward — his arms were short, his belly large — he turned his head this way and that, watching the gestures of the women hopping alongside, the potbellied children staring round-eyed, and skipped to save his ankles from the dogs; twice he fell and had to be lifted from the dust. The tall one, however, kept his eyes to the front. The dogs did not snap at him, for even bound he was half a head taller than any Indian.

  Hi! the women shouted: Hi! A brave! and made gestures of obscenity, fanning their skirts. Hi! Hi!

  The chiefs sat in the council room, wearing feathers and paint in gaudy bars, and the two were brought before them. Now they looked at each other, chiefs and trappers, and no one spoke. Then Loshumitubbe made a gesture, the hand palm down, pushing downward, and they were taken to the pit room at the far end of the long-house. It was dark in there, no fire; the only light was what fell through the paling disk of the smoke hole. The cries of the women came shrill through the roof, mixed with the yapping of dogs. The time wore on. From outside, he says, they began to hear the short one weeping, asking questions in his language, but the tall one only cursed him, once then twice, and then ignored him.

  So it was: they on the outside, waiting for the moon to fill, knowing: the trappers on the inside, in the pit, waiting but not knowing. Seven suns they were in there, feeding like hogs on broken bits of food flung through the smole hole — for they remained bound, the rawhide shrinking on their wrists, and had to grovel for it. They fouled themselves and were gut-sick on the scraps, he says, and the stench was so great that the women approaching the hole to taunt them held their noses and made sqealing sounds. From outside, listening, his people heard words in the strange language: at first only the short one, calling the other Fink or Lance and sometimes Lancelot: then later, toward the close, the tall one too, calling the short one Tyree, though which of his two names this was no man could say, not even now, for they were Americans, a people whose names are sometimes indistinguishable, the last from the first, since they name not necessarily for the saints. At the end, however, they called to one another not by name but by growls, for the food was scant and hard to find on the dark earth floor; they fought for it like dogs, snapping their teeth, still being bound.

  Then, lo, the moon would be full that night. Long before sundown the people were painted and ready, dressed as for the corn dance. The young ones wore only breech clouts and feathers, fierce with red and yellow bars of paint, but the older ones brought out blankets rancid with last year’s grease and sweat. The cold had returned; the leaves were brown now, falling, and they crackled underfoot. It was yet above freezing, he says, and there was no wind, but the cold was steady and bitter and sharp and a thick mist came rolling off the river.

  The trappers were taken from the pit as soon as the sun was gone. Their clothes were cut from their bodies and they were sluiced with hot water to cleanse them of their filth; they stood in only their boots and bonds, their hands purple and puffy because the rawhide had shrunk on their wrists, their skin first pink from the heat of the water, then pale gray, goose-fleshed, and their teeth chattered behind their bluing lips. Then was when they saw that the short one was covered with what appeared to be louse bites, small hard red welts like pimples. The time in the pit had changed them indeed, and not only in appearance. For now it was the tall one who kept glancing about, shifting his eyes this way and that, while the short one stood looking down over his belly at his boots; he did not care. Just as the tall one had used up his courage, so had the short one exhausted his cowardice. Then at a signal the guards took hold of their arms and they went toward the mound, stepping stiff-kneed. The old men with blankets over their shoulders walked alongside. The young men, wearing only feathers and breech clouts, leaped and shouted, their breaths making steam.

  Atop the mound the chiefs were waiting, seated in a half circle with a bonfire burning behind them for light. They faced the stakes. One was a single pole with a rawhide thong up high; the other was two low poles with a third lashed as a crosspiece at the height of a man’s waist. Then the trappers were brought. From the flat top of the mound, he says, they could see torches burning in the lower darkness, spangling the earth, countless as stars, for the people had come from three sleeps around; they stood holding torches, looking up to where the bonfire burned against the night. The tall trapper was tied to the single stake, arms overhead, hands crossed so high that only the toes of his boots touched the earth — the tallest man they had ever seen, taller than ever, now, with skin as pale in the firelight as the underbark of sycamores in spring. The short trapper stood between the two low stakes, his wrists lashed to the crossbar on each side of his waist. Both were breathing fast little jets of steam, partly from having climbed the mound but mostly from fear; for now, he says, they knew at least a part of what they had been wondering all that long time in the darkness of the pit.

  The moon rose, swollen golden red, and now the dancing began, the young men stepping pigeon-toed, shuffling dust, and Otumatomba the rainmaker stood by the fire with his knife. When the dancing was done he came forward, extending the knife flat on the palms of both hands, and Loshumitubbe touched it. The drums began. Then Otumatomba came slowly toward the short one, who was held by four of the dancers, two at the knees and two at the shoulders, bent backward over the crosspole. He did not struggle or cry out; he looked down his chest, past the jut of his belly, watching the knife. What follows happened so fast, he says, that afterwards looking back it seemed to have been done in the flick of an eye.

  Otumatomba placed the point of the knife, then suddenly leaned against the handle and drew it swiftly across, a long deep slash just under the last left rib. So quick the eye could barely follow, his hand went in. The knife fell and the hand came out with the heart. It was meaty and red, the size of a fist, with streaks of yellow fat showing through the skin-sack; vessels dangled, collapsed and dripping, except the one at the top, which was dingy white, the thickness of a thumb, leading back through the lips of the gash. Then (there was no signal, he says; they knew what to do, for Otumatomba had taught them) the men at the shoulders pushed forward, bringing the trapper upright off the bar, and for a moment he stood looking down at his heart, which Otumatomba held in front of h
is chest for him to see. It did not pulse; it flickered, the skin-sack catching highlights from the fire, and it smoked a bit in the night air. That was all. The short one fell, collapsing; he hung with his face just clear of the ground, his wrists still tied to the crosspole.

  Hi! a brave, he heard one say among the chiefs.

  But that was all; the rest were quiet as the rainmaker took up the knife again and turned toward the tall one, lashed on tiptoe to the stake. As he drew closer the trapper began to swing from side to side, bound overhead at the wrists and down at the ankles. When Otumatomba was very near, the tall white naked man began to shout at him in his language: No! No! swinging from side to side and shouting hoarsely, until the rainmaker, with a sudden, darting motion like the strike of a snake, shot out one hand and caught hold: whereupon the trapper stopped swinging and shouted still more shrilly, like women in the longhouse at the death of a chief, in the final moment before the cutting began. While Otumatomba sawed with the knife, which seemed duller now and slippery with the blood of the other, the tall one was screaming, hysterical like a woman in labor, repeating a rising note: Ee! Eee! Then he stopped. He stopped quite suddenly. Otumatomba stepped back and tossed the trapper’s manhood at his feet. The trapper looked down — more than pain, his face showed grief, bereavement — and now he began to whimper. Blood ran down his thighs, curving over the inward bulge of his knees, and filled his boots. He was a long time dying and he died badly, still crying for mercy when he was far beyond it.