by Mike Blakely
In addition to the disputes, there were a few cases involving impatient hunters who had sneaked past the Watchers and started killing before the signals had been given. Again, witnesses had to be consulted, and alibis corroborated. A couple of the accused Kiowa hunters were found guilty, and the Horse Headdresses indeed took all their weapons and horses from them, and destroyed the meat and hides they had bagged. One of these young hunters from Little Bluff’s band was held down to have buffalo kwitapu rubbed over him as well as his kill, as Little Bluff had warned.
Then there was the problem of water. The small creek along which we camped soon became fouled by people, animals, and the business of butchering. Kills Something ordered the camp to move west to the stream called Running Water where it issued from the canyons of the Caprock Escarpment. The little river was known to have plenty of clear water. The march was to be made in haste, so meat would not spoil. There were nearer rivers to the north, but the elders knew their waters would have been muddied by the stampeding of the great herd.
So it was that on the Running Water, Westerly tanned the sacred hide while I was made to tell the story again and again of how I had made the kill. Great quantities of meat were consumed, sun-dried, smoked, even salted by those who had traded for salt. The pecans gathered on the San Saba were added to dried meat, pounded thin, encased in cleansed intestines, and flavored with wild fruits. There was wood and grass on the Running Water in quantities sufficient to last through the process of preserving all the meat taken in the hunt. When that wood and grass gave out, Kills Something ordered the move to the Crossing on the Canadian River, our favorite winter campground, there in the shadows of old Fort Adobe. Satank and his people went elsewhere, but Little Bluff’s people followed Kills Something to Adobe Walls. There we camped in peace into the winter, living the good life for a while.
It was simply understood now that Kills Something was our war chief, while the venerable old warrior Shaved Head nursed his broken leg and graciously accepted his new role as peace chief. And I, an adopted Comanche, white by blood, had become a hero to Kills Something’s band. I can say without boasting that in the entire band, only three men were more respected than me. They were Kills Something, Shaved Head, and Burnt Belly—the war chief, the peace chief, and the medicine man. I was the trader, the apprentice conjurer, the translator, and the slayer of the fabled white buffalo, whose robe would surely protect us all from destruction. Life was good that winter, and I did my best to enjoy it and pretend that it would last.
Yet, my heart knew better. Wandering Indians and Comanchero traders from New Mexico brought disturbing news from the world outside of Comancheria. Trouble continued in the East with the war raging, Yankees and Rebels both trying to sway the Indians to their bloody causes. Trouble raged in the West, where Colonel Kit Carson’s forces had invaded the very heart of Navaho country, striking where no soldiers had ever ridden before. I knew the hoops of time would roll and whir and come crashing to earth again, and I feared they would in time come violently trundling down the Canadian River Valley to my very home.
Thirty-Eight
Methodically, with the meticulous care of an apothecary, I spread the circle of doeskin before me across the blanket upon which I sat cross-legged. Upon this doeskin I placed a bundle of cranesbill geraniums that Burnt Belly had uprooted and washed several moons before. The aroma of smoke filled the lodge, for the old healer had just lifted a red-hot stone from the fire with a chokecherry fork and placed a few dried fir needles upon it. As my mentor had instructed, I dissected the stalky little flower, making separate piles for roots, stems, and leaves.
Burnt Belly was chanting under his breath, producing a low hum that was not unpleasant to listen to. Suddenly, his chant ended, and he reached for the small jug of trade whiskey I had brought to him. He pulled the stopper and tipped the mouth of the jug up to his lips. I did not see him swallow, but he held the whiskey in his mouth until he replaced the stopper and put the jug aside. Then, he leaned forward and spat the whiskey out on the fire, making it flare and sizzle. He laughed a raspy old chuckle, obviously pleased with the way the whiskey fueled the flame.
“That is good.” He went back to his work with some other herb he was preparing for his practice. “That cranesbill is very useful,” he said, gesturing to the plant I held in my hand. “Every warrior should carry the powdered root on raids. It stops bleeding. So, you will grind that root in the stone bowl when you get it all taken apart.”
“What about the other parts of the plant?” I asked. “How should I prepare them?”
“Let the leaves remain whole. They can be eaten to stop bleeding inside or to stop loose bowels. Or they can be made into a hot poultice for rashes or other skin problems. They can be boiled to a potion that will wash out evil of the mouth, or the eyes. My sits-beside wife puts a bit of the leaf in my parfleche bags to keep meat fresh.”
“Where are your wives today?” I asked, looking around the lodge. It was one of the most spacious tipis in the camp and it seemed especially large when the women were absent.
“They have gone to the lodge for unclean women.”
“All four of them?”
“Tsah. Women are very strange creatures. You know, of course, that they have an unclean time of bleeding with every moon, and they must go to the lodge for unclean women until that time is over.”
“Yes, so their unclean time does not spoil the good things the spirits have given us.”
“True. But I would make a wager that you did not know this: when women live in a lodge together—even if they all have the unclean time at different phases of the moon when they start the living together—after a few moons, they will all begin to have the unclean time at the same time! They claim that they do not have any control over this, but I am not so sure.”
I smiled. “Do you think they intend to do it?”
“I suspect that this is so. This way, all four of my wives get to go away to the lodge for unclean women together and leave me here to take care of myself.”
“But how can they make the unclean time change?”
“They are all witches,” he said, glaring at me. Then he burst into laughter and shook his head. “Perhaps not. But I do know that while they should be chanting and praying to cleanse themselves out there in that lodge, they are instead making jokes and telling stories and laughing. I have heard them from far away, cackling like a bunch of grackles. I can hear things from farther away than anyone else because of the Thunderbird power.”
I reached for the stone metate and the pestle that went with it—things I had brought to Burnt Belly from New Mexico. I began grinding the roots of the cranesbill geraniums into a powder. “Does the power of the Thunderbird also show you how to make your voice sound as if it is coming from a place other than your mouth?”
Burnt Belly glanced up at me briefly, as if to warn me. “I learned that from the thunder.”
“How?”
“What do you hear when you listen to thunder?”
I shrugged. “A rumble. Sometimes a loud blast.”
“You are not really listening. There are voices in the thunder. Perhaps a person must be struck by lightning to hear the voices. I would not recommend that you try that.”
“What do the voices say?”
“Many things. But your question was about the way my voice speaks where I want it to. The voices in the thunder taught me this. You can learn it, too.”
I looked up from my herbalist’s chores. “How?”
“A noise is not just a noise. A sound is like a person with a false heart. It behaves one way in one place, and another way in different surroundings. I can cast my voice off a stone bluff, but not off the moist dirt at my feet. The stone bluff listens and repeats what it has heard immediately, like a gossiping woman. Mother Earth is wiser. She just listens. Hard things make sounds echo. If they are far away the echo comes after my voice. If they are close, there is still an echo, but it comes almost at the same time as my voice. So,
listen to the objects around you. Touch them. If they are solid and slick, they will throw your voice for you. It takes practice and much thought, but you can learn it. Like most magic, there is really no secret to it at all”
“I will practice it.”
“Do not dwell on it. It is just a trick.”
I worked with the mortar and pestle until I felt a pang of hunger. “We should go to my lodge so my wife can cook some fresh meat for us,” I suggested. “I killed a fat squirrel yesterday, and a rabbit the day before. She will make a stew for us.”
“Good,” he replied. “Your wife is a good wife. I think she is afraid of me.”
“Only a little. She likes you, grandfather.”
“I like her, too. She is Cheyenne, and that is good. The Cheyennes are good people, and their women are pretty. When I was a boy, we were at war with the Cheyennes. It is better now that we are allies. Come, we will see how a Cheyenne woman makes stew.”
Burnt Belly dropped his herbs, rose, and drew his favorite buffalo robe around his shoulders for the short walk to my lodge. When we got there, he held me back and pointed to the smoke hole of my tipi. “Those lodge poles are hard and polished. They will cast your words down into the lodge if you will your voice to go there.”
I tried to somehow focus my voice in one direction, saying, “Your husband is home with Grandfather Burnt Belly.”
No one responded.
“Westerly!” I said, louder. “I am home.” There was no answer. “She is not here.”
We stepped inside and found the fire burned down to a few coals. I saw a sheet of paper at my feet and picked it up to read Westerly’s handwriting on it. I had to laugh.
“What does it say?” the shaman asked.
“It says, ‘Husband … I have gone to the lodge for unclean women.’”
Burnt Belly grinned and said, “Witches! Now we must do our own cooking.”
He took the note from me and looked at it as I threw some small sticks on the coals. He smelled it, and held it to his ear for some time.
“I hear voices in thunder,” he said. “But you … You hear voices from a thing that makes no noise at all.” He shook the missive at me. “This is magic.”
AFTER A TIME, Peta Nocona’s village came to camp near Adobe Walls, bringing young Quanah. They located some distance down the river so as not to crowd our horse herd with their own, for grass was growing scarce. I rode to their village one day and found Peta Nocona himself making arrow points from a barrel hoop with a file. I noticed an open gash on his upper arm. An arrow wound, he said, received in a fight with some Utes in the mountains.
“You should go see Burnt Belly about that,” I suggested.
“I make my own medicine,” he said. Peta—once a powerful force among the Nokoni Comanches—had grown sullen since his wife, Nadua, had been recaptured by whites at the battle of Pease River and forced to adopt her old identity of Cynthia Ann Parker. He never again attacked a Texas settlement, and seemed to have lost his interest in leading his people. He had not taken a wife to replace Nadua.
I left Peta and sought out Quanah. As soon as he saw me, he said, “I have heard a story that you killed a white buffalo, uncle.” He used the term of respect when he addressed me now, though I was not really his uncle.
“It is true.”
He smiled, his eyes glinting with anticipation. “You must tell me.”
So I repeated, once again, the tale of my famous hunt to my young friend who called me “uncle.” Life was good that winter. Very good for a while. But very good things, like very bad things, never last very long.
Thirty-Nine
The Moon of Hunger rose on a bleak and leafless world. Ice and snow invaded the Crossing on the Canadian, draping the old Adobe Walls with a lacework of white. It seemed everything living and edible had gone into hibernation on another continent. Since the big hunt where I bagged the white buffalo, the great herds had drifted on and splintered into many far-ranging bunches of skittish animals. Spring seemed years away, and the last morsels of dried meat and pemmican had disappeared. The hunters could not even locate a stray antelope or deer. This was called “the Time When Babies Cry for Food.”
We killed and butchered the poorest horses first. No one wanted to even think of eating the better horses, and we hoped it would not come to that. Horses would be needed to move when the weather broke. Some wealthy families owned many surplus horses, but most claimed no more than half a dozen mounts. A Comanche without a horse was something less than a True Human. Still, it was better to be poor and afoot than dead of starvation, so the promising yearlings began to fall to the arrow and the knife. Only the finest horses were kept alive on cottonwood bark that the young boys had to strip from the trees in the bitter cold.
A council was called in the cruel clutches of a blizzard. The people were restless and angry. News from the north had filtered down. It was said that the raiding Cheyennes and Arapahos had been given gifts by Owl Man—William Bent—to settle them down. Little Bluff, the old Kiowa chief closely allied with our band of Comanches for so many years, stood and spoke at this council, his voice stern, his hands translating his Kiowa words to sign talk.
“For many moons we have raided the tejanos and left the Americans alone. Our hunters have watched the wagons go by on the trails to the north of here, and have not bothered them. Our scouts have seen the tracks left by bluecoats, but have not followed them to hunt scalps or count coups. Now, while we starve, the Cheyennes and Arapahos are getting gifts and rations of beef from the Americans because they have attacked white wagons and killed white herders. It is time to end the starvation of our people and do what the nations to the north do to get beef. It is time to make war on the whites. Not just the tejanos. All whites!”
The younger warriors spoke in time, most of them agreeing with Little Bluff. When my chance came to speak, I rose, and defended my mentor, William Bent. “Who has seen Owl Man give rations to Cheyennes who have been raiding?” No one spoke or raised a hand. “I have seen him provide food many times for his people. He is adopted Cheyenne. But would he give his people food and gifts as a reward for raiding? I know Owl Man, and I know that he would not. Two winters ago, Owl Man gave rations to a band of Cheyennes who had had a fight with a white hunter who killed buffalo only for the hides. It was proven that the white hunter shot at the Cheyennes first, wounding one of them, and so they were only protecting themselves. This hunter was killed in the fight. These Cheyennes were given food because they were hungry and they had come to the Cheyenne agency to ask Owl Man for rations. They were not given food for being bad. I was there with Owl Man when this thing happened. I know what I am talking about. The story has been told too many times by those who were not there, and the truth has been told right out of it. It is not a good idea to attack the wagons or villages of the Americans. To do so would not bring us rations of beef. It would bring war parties of bluecoats to our country in numbers never seen before. When this blizzard breaks, we must move to better hunting grounds or raid for more horses and cattle in Texas. We must not take handouts from Americans. War with them is not the best way. I have spoken.”
My opinion was not popular with everyone. Some young warriors, when they had their turn to speak, reminded the council that my blood was white, and that my wife was Cheyenne. But old Shaved Head, speaking now as a peace chief, rose to my defense, scolding the young warriors for criticizing me.
“Plenty Man is my grandson. He is pure Noomah. Many times his counsel has saved us from trouble with whites. He moves among the whites as easily as he moves among True Humans, but his heart is always Noomah. His bravery shall not be questioned, nor should his wisdom. He has said many times that if war comes with bluecoats or tejanos, he will protect his Comanche family. If we raid American wagons, it will not fill our stomachs with food. The spirits test us every winter, during the Hunger Moon, and this winter is no different. Listen to Plenty Man. He is the slayer of the white buffalo whose robe even now protects our v
illage and will bring meat to those who have faith in spirit medicine. We must hunt and raid to the south, and leave the Americans alone. I have spoken.”
At this point, Quanah rose from the outer ring of young men. “I am riding tomorrow,” he said. Every face in the big lodge turned to look at the brash young warrior who had been mourning his father’s death for almost two moons, for the wound Peta had received in the fight with Utes had festered and killed him. “I will raid far to the south. There will be many horses and cattle. We will find game. I have sent prayers to the Great Mystery on the smoke of green cedar. I have had a vision. I do not fear this blizzard. My spirit powers will find shelter for all who follow me. Anyone brave enough to ride with me tomorrow will share in the take and go hungry no more. I have spoken.”
Now Chief Little Bluff rose again, chuckling at Quanah’s swagger. “The young men are brave and reckless. I am old, and careful. I would rather die in battle than freeze to death with an empty stomach. So I will starve through this blizzard in this camp, but when the snows have ended, I will starve no more. I will lead all who wish to teach the Americans a lesson. For many years I have tried to get along with white men. It is like trying to reason with the snowflakes in that blizzard out there. But no more. No longer will they scatter our game and cross our country without paying. Now is the time, while they are at war with one another in the east. Now is the time to strike and take our country back! I have spoken.”
After the council, a few restless young Comanche men agreed to brave the blizzard and go south with Quanah, while most of the Kiowa warriors embraced Little Bluff’s philosophy. The people of Kills Something’s band were divided. Some vowed to follow Little Bluff. Others leaned toward the advice of Shaved Head and me. One thing seemed clear to me. Trouble was as sure to come as the changing of the moons. War fever had infected even our remote outpost on the Canadian.