Will it be thus for me? she wondered. She was unsettled despite Bapakine’s assurance, and remembered Grandmother Nookomis telling her to be wary of men, for her pretty face and jutting hips would bring them sniffing.
“Men are nothing but wolves,” Nookomis had said as they sat together by the fire. “They growl as they challenge each other. They test and push. They edge into the space of others with an aura of menace, seeking weakness. Bigger men loom over smaller men, and smaller men snarl with the threat of stabbing upwards. They nose at each other, offering smiles that conceal fangs, locking eyes in an endless struggle of domination. They hunt as wolves in a pack. They prey as wolves on the weak. They turn on each other and on the old and disabled when it is to their advantage. They turn on their leaders as well. They kill as wolves simply for the pleasure of killing. And when they are needed most, they often turn and run.”
And yet, Grandmother said, the wolves loved each other and needed each other and could not survive without their pack, for a lone wolf soon dies of hunger and fear. And so there were times when the wolves of men would gladly die for each other. This, she said, is why men slept together on their side of the lodges, and women on the other, with the twain never meeting under the gaze of others. And why men slept in body piles in a tangle of limbs on the hunt to keep warm, their hands jerking each others’ cocks for the sport of it. And why they shared every scrap of food, no matter who made the kill.
“And this is why sometimes men are wolves to their women,” Grandmother concluded. She knew, for her own long-dead husband had been a wolf disguised as man who had treated her just so. “Though a wolf mates for life, still, like a man, he is never faithful in his heart, always looking for another bitch,” Nookomis had said glumly. “A wolf is a pretty thing, but you must always remember that it bites.”
If grandmother felt that way about the men of their own people, what would she say of the Dakota? Ashagi had never felt more like a rabbit, quaking as the sound of drums grew louder with every step.
Word of their arrival had spread in advance and a great cry went up from the women, children, and elders of the camp who rushed to greet the returning warriors. As they pushed up from the river, hundreds of the Dakota women and children gathered at either side of the captives, throwing rocks, dog shit, and chunks of smoldering firewood as the column pushed forward. Those few whose men had not returned from the raid turned on them in a fury.
Soon, they were shuffling through a cloudburst of missiles and blows, pushing forward in a herd with their arms cradling their heads for protection. A woman went down and the Dakota rushed forward with cries of glee, beating her until her sister-cousins dragged her back to the protection of their arms. Eya, and some of them seized the clubs and stones from their foes and swung back, showing their teeth and screaming their defiance as their children hid behind them. The mob roiled like a ranting beast with a thousand arms as the sisters of the Anishinaabek pushed their way up from the river. Soon, it was as if they were being crushed by hundreds of jeering faces on either side.
“They mean to kill us all!” Ashagi screamed above the tumult.
“They are only testing us, sister, to see if we are strong enough to join them as their adopted kin!” Bapakine shouted. “Stand tall and walk on as if you were lord of the Great Turtle Island itself.”
Ashagi pressed forward into the screaming mass of the enemy’s women. She took a blow to the head from a length of firewood, which left bleeding splinters along her cheek. She turned and spat her rage, lunging with her fingernails at the nearest face of the tormenters. This, of course, produced only laughter and a shower of more filth and stones, for Ashagi’s beauty marked her as a target for a humbling. Finally, the Anishinaabek women and their children broke from the screaming mob and gathered in a protected space between several lodges. They sat down as one, huddled in a stony hostility as the Dakota drifted away to celebrate with their returning men.
For two days and a night the victory dance carried on in a great clearing at the center of the camp through the thunder of drums and feasting. First, a chieftain Ashagi came to know as Hiahaa-sapa, Black Owl, performed his pantomime of how he had been first among the warriors into the village of the Ojibwe, striking again and again.
Painted black from head to toe and covered in a cloak of eagle feathers that fanned out like wings behind him, Hiahaa-sapa’s dance was long and repetitious, but each time he sallied again through his vision of the Ojibwe village with his club raised high, the drums of the Dakota thundered faster and louder, raising every heartbeat and cry of admiration as every member of the encampment leapt to their feet to dance with him.
And then, amid a great cloud of golden dust, so dense that Ashagi could barely see, every warrior in the war party danced his part as well, one at a time, all through the night and the next day with the drums never ceasing. Gazing from beyond the ring of their captors the women of the Anishinaabek huddled for comfort among themselves, almost forgotten.
And then the celebration was over, and everyone in the village had collapsed in exhaustion, with many deafened by the drumming, That was when Ashagi was parted from her sisters after much squabbling among the Dakota. She was roused from sleep in the corral of captives and taken by the potbellied old man with the slack face and the dead eye.
By nightfall she learned that her new owner’s name was Snail Eye, Kesamna’ista, and that she was doomed to join his lodge as his third wife.
2.
SNAIL EYE
Kesamna’ista, a man of medium height, but thick as an old, squat oak around the middle, styled himself a great chieftain and spoke thus whenever there was a gathering of the bands of the Dakota. But in Ashagi’s eyes, he was nothing but a bully who ate more than his share and farted often, lording over a small band whose men were too old, too young, or too meek to put him in his place. Kesamna’ista had taken her from Pezhi’yuta, Grass Eater, the cross-eyed youth who had dragged her screaming from the massacre of her lodge after her father had injured him. Pezhi’yuta was only an in-between man of fifteen summers, and when he protested that Ashagi was his by rights, Kesamna’ista shoved him backwards, sending him tumbling through the cinders of a fire pit. Grass Eater had slunk away in shame, pausing at the edge of the clearing to curse Kesamna’ista in his high, piping voice before disappearing into the forest.
“She is the daughter of a great chief that I killed in battle,” Kesamna’ista boasted before his band, though most smirked at such a tale. At best, they whispered, Kesamna’ista had busied himself in the raid by killing the wounded.
But Pezhi’yuta was not finished with Ashagi. He took his complaint to the old men of the council. It was a disgraceful matter to banter so over a woman, but the elders took it up because several men had laid claim to Ashagi, whose beauty had smitten all who saw her. The old chiefs knew that puddles of violence often rose in the footsteps of such a woman. So, within three days of her arrival at the encampment, the elders gathered in the council lodge, taking off their moccasins to discuss her fate.
Kesamna’ista was a negligible chieftain whose band produced few warriors of note. But he had done good service for the Dakota for many years, and despite his reputation as a wind maker, had always come through when the council sent him the summoning pipe. He had powerful friends among the clans and could make trouble if he so wished. The chiefs also noted that Kesamna’ista had no son to carry on his lodge. He had lost his only son to a fever two summers before, and his second wife had produced only daughters.
“Brothers, Kesamna’ista has two wives already, while I have none,” Pezhi’yuta protested. “I took a wound in the capture of the Ojibwe woman and deserve her above all others. And brothers, I am more likely to bring new warriors from her belly, warriors who would be far stronger than those of an old man’s seed.”
These, too, were words the elders heeded, though their faces remained as still as fired clay. Kesamna’ista and Pezhi’yuta were dismissed from the lodge.
�
�So much trouble for a simple village girl,” the eldest among them muttered. “Men have no control of themselves, not like in the old days when men ruled their own cocks, instead of being ruled by them.”
“Ah, but if you saw her, you, too, would be a suitor,” said the elder to his left.
“How is this?”
“She would make you young again, old man.”
“Perhaps, but that sort of woman also makes a young man old. She will be trouble for anyone who has her.”
“Then be careful not to look at her, brother. She is a spellcaster who would eat your soul.”
The leader of the council let these words pass, for it would not do to accuse such a rare beauty as a witch.
“See that you control your own lust, brother, for it appears she has bedazzled you,” he answered in a low voice. “See that you do not disappoint me.”
“Ah, I’ve been cursed enough by women,” the elder snorted, waving the fan of his hawk wing in dismissal. “I would not want another. But she has charms, brother. She has charms.”
A solution was called for that would appease both parties, with the other suitors dismissed as having worthless claims. The old men decreed that Ashagi would live in Kesamna’ista’s lodge as his third wife until she bore him a son. Thereafter, she would pass to Pezhi’yuta to live as his wife.
Kesamna’ista was more than happy with the decision, knowing that Pezhi’yuta would soon find another woman in a faraway band, perhaps even amid the present encampment. And if it came to pass that the Ojibwe girl quickly gave him a son, then he, Kesamna’ista, would be charitable for the gift from the Great Mystery and would surrender her if Pezhi’yuta so desired.
As for Ashagi, there was no voice at the council for a woman, much less a captive of the enemy. Hers was the fate of sisters in every tribe across the Great Turtle Island of creation: the unwilling marriage of a young maiden to a powerful, old man. And though Kesamna’ista boasted that Ashagi had become his third wife, the reality was that she was something less: a concubine and a slave to his first and second wives, Saya’hupahu, Red Bird, and Mazaskahawihopa, Silverbark Woman.
The elder of the two, Saya’hupahu, had a face as broad and wrinkled as a rotting pumpkin. She was clenching the long stem of her pipe in her teeth when Ashagi entered her lodge for the first time. It was dark in the lodge and Ashagi failed to see the rage on her new sister-wife’s face. When Ashagi turned to gaze upon the sleeping platform in the hope of finding a place, the old woman shoved her from behind, slamming her head against a lodge pole. She yammered something incomprehensible, making angry gestures to go. Ashagi caught the word “snake,” and understood her well enough.
She fled outside, gathering her legs in her arms to huddle against the wall of the lodge, sobbing as the moon rose, and swatting at the dogs who nosed at her tears. Then Kesamna’ista had come, his breath stinking heavy from his pipe, and dragged her inside where he turned her over and pounded against her flanks before the other women, shaming her like a dog on a stinking, half-cured buffalo robe as the tears dripped into the thick fur. Eya, he took her hard, grunting and gasping in his lust before the eyes of her new sisters as they looked on with cold faces. It was Kesamna’ista’s way of telling them all where they stood.
Afterward, she lay on the deer hide floor of the lodge, feeling as limp and filthy as the prairie straw used to clean their meat platters. For a long time, she willed herself to think nothing at all, her mind as empty as the darkness. Only when Kesamna’ista’s snoring rose to a keen that she could not ignore did she conceive a vow to kill him on some early morning as he lay sleeping.
Ashagi’s grandmother had told her that the wives of the Dakota were treated worse than those of any women under the sun. “They are made to sleep with the dogs at the entry of their lodges, serving as slaves to the men who dwell within,” Nookomis had said.
This, Ashagi learned, was not true, for the women of the Dakota had their own sleeping mats and robes, as did their men, their children, and their old ones. In this, she found, they were no different than the lodges of the Ojibwe. There were cruel men in the enemy’s village, but also men whose eyes took on a shine when they gazed upon the faces of their wives. She saw many men who capered before their women, hoping for a smile. Gazing silent as a deer, she observed that the Dakota loved their children just as much as did her own people.
Yet her place was indeed with the dogs at the entryway, who nosed and licked at her as she lay tossing among them each evening. She pulled their fleas from her body each night, crushing them between her teeth and swallowing them with the thought that each insect was the soul of the men who had burned her village.
“Every woman is a slave once she takes a husband and leaves the carefree days of flirting and girlhood behind,” Grandmother had said. “Eya, it is a bargain with Maji-Manito to trade one’s freedom for the security of a man, but what else can a woman do?”
“You must never speak the name of the Evil One,” Ashagi had cautioned, gazing around as if the devil might leap at them. Yet grandmother’s words had been as true with the women of the Dakota as with those of the Anishinaabek. They, too, had to scramble for firewood each day, pitch the lodges, hunt for berries and wild oats, scrape the hides, tan the skins, care for the children, and roast the fish and game. With frequent shoves and sharp words, all these duties and more were heaped on Ashagi by Saya’hupahu and Mazaskahawihopa.
Pinched and harassed by her new sister-wives, Ashagi bathed in the river each evening to wash away her tears. Often, she slapped at the hands of young romancers who came to admire the women as they bathed and were smitten by her beauty. At dark came the night walkers, young men who crept among the earth lodges, playing on their flutes and whispering for the women within to join them.
She did not know it, but the young men of the Dakotas had taken to calling her Sweet Plum after the fruits which grew by the river. Yet to her face, they often called her “hag” or “fish face” in the hope of cowing her into submitting to their desires. They had made a contest of winning her favor, though often with advances that Ashagi found crude and inept.
“Bend over for me,” said one, caressing her back as she emerged from bathing one evening. He was a tall, buck-toothed dandy who had been flirting with her many days now. Many times he had called her mihopeca, a woman whose beauty was beyond all others.
Ashagi froze at his touch. It was as if he had slapped her in the face, and she blushed with the sting. In her own village, no one would dare speak of her in such a rude manner. At best, the young men who hoped to win her might gaze shyly across the campfire at night, hoping that she might lift her eyes to theirs.
But then, Ashagi remembered her new name, drawing strength from the memory of her clan. It was for her to uphold the honor of the Herons.
“Ignorant oaf, why don’t you lay with a frog or a fish?” she replied bitterly. “They are more your own kind, and you would have better chance of laying with them than me.”
“Come with me,” he gestured toward the woods.
“No.”
“Then pleasure me with your hand, at least,” he said in a lazy way, gazing at her through hooded eyes. “I command it.”
Ashagi laughed. “You disgust me. You offer no sweet words? No gifts or pledges? I’d rather stroke a dog,” she said, grimacing at the thought of it. “Come back when you are a dog and bark for your favor.” Unsaid were the words, “so I might kick you in the ribs.”
“Don’t you know I am your dog for the asking?” he grumbled. “What else could a bitch of the Ojibwe desire? I will bring you presents. I will give you sweet words. I will give you anything you wish.”
“Give me your back. That is all I desire,” she spat. That, and a knife.
But he pressed her no further because the young women of the Dakota had whispered that Ashagi had the teeth of the Ojibwe vampire in her vagina and could use them at her pleasure. This was easily believed, for most men suspected that all women of beauty must be so equi
pped. That, and she was Kesamna’ista’s concubine. Snail Eye was an old man who could be tossed on his buttocks easily enough, but as a head man with many allies he could cause trouble for those caught meddling with his prize.
Her looks may have attracted unwanted attention, but they also kept her well fed. The women of the Dakotas ate after the men, and there was barely enough to feed a dog by the time Ashagi got her share. Yet a few young men took pains to place choice bits of meat in her bowl in the hope she would join them in the brush beyond the village, or at least bless them with a smile. And smile she did, for Ashagi was no fool, but she gave nothing more.
As far as small kindnesses from Saya’hupahu went, there were none. Ashagi’s eldest sister-wife remained as stern as a cliff face for as long as she knew her. But Ashagi quickly became the sister of Mazaskahawihopa—Maza for short—who was happy to have her company in the lodge. Ashagi had found Bapakine, her adopted sister from home, and they tried to meet at night to comfort each other amid the hubbub of the encampment, but during the days, she spent much of her time with Maza. Maza was patient and kind and taught Ashagi more of the language of the Dakota Sioux, which she had to admit, was more musical than that of the Anishinaabek. The more words she learned, the more she learned of her captors.
“Why do your men mark themselves so strangely?” she asked one day as they gathered firewood beyond the river. The Dakota warriors tattooed their foreheads and wrists with the markings of their clans.
“It is so their ancestors will know them when they die,” Maza replied.
Ashagi scoffed. “My ancestors will know me well enough when I pass.”
Windigo Moon Page 3