I saw everything that Mo Tilly had warned me about. I saw death, and plenty of it. I saw bloody scalps lifted up onto poles as we danced around them. I saw children caught and turned into Indians. I saw the torture of our enemies. I saw the mutilation of bodies, the arms and legs of the dead hacked off and hung in trees. I saw the “utter degradation” of captured women, and I participated in all of it, except this last.
For this, I had not the stomach. Think of me what you will. It is true that I killed and scalped, and that sometimes the victim was still alive as I ran my knife around his or her head. It is true that I took children away from their parents. It is true that I participated in the grisly aftermath rituals of battle. But while I never stopped it, I also never participated in the rape of a woman. I merely walked away and tried to close my ears to her screams and pleading.
I had been with the band almost a year the first time the soldiers came into a village. It was in the fall. We were camped along the Washita River, and it was very cold, and a blanket of snow covered the ground. There were many Indians there, for it was not just Comanche, but also some Kiowa, and the entire winter encampment of the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho.
The Cheyenne chief Black Kettle’s village was upstream from the Comanche, and it took the brunt of the attack, which came at dawn while the village slept. By the time we heard of it, the village was done for, many of its inhabitants killed, lodges looted and burned, and the soldiers, still not knowing of our presence, were shooting the horses, which ran off bleeding and dying into the snow.
I was among the warriors who mounted up and rode off for battle. These soldiers were stupid. They had not scouted well. They did not know, because they had not bothered to find out, that around the bend, downriver from Black Kettle’s village, there were fifteen miles of tipis, each tipi usually housing at least six Indians. After seeing so many of us painted up and mounted, ready to fight, the soldiers retreated, and beyond a few skirmishes we could not engage them, but the damage for Black Kettle was done. He lay with his wife, both dead in a stream, splashed with mud from the soldiers’ horses.
We rode through Black Kettle’s village on our return to our own. I saw scattered across the ground the bodies of women and children. I saw outside a tipi, which was miraculously still standing, a woman with her baby on her back, both shot through. I saw the dark shapes of a thousand dead horses, their trails of blood mapping bright red rivers across the snow. Fires smoldered, tipi hides and buffalo robes tossed onto them, black smoke roiling into the sky, adding fumes to the stench of death and blood that filled the cold air. By the time we reached our village the women had broken it down. The horses and travois were packed, and we disappeared away from there.
I do not recall where we traveled after we left the Washita, but I can tell you this: it was after seeing the destruction of Black Kettle’s village that I began to feel my life as a slave slipping off me, like a snake leaving its shed skin caught on the branch of a tree. I could feel that I was leaving it all behind me somewhere, empty and draped and forgotten.
The year that followed the death of Black Kettle was much the same as the first year, except that I was Comanche now. I was thoroughly Comanche, and nothing could change this.
So many nights I stepped out of the tipi and gazed at the stars thick in the sky above the plains. I listened to the ripple of the river we were camped along, to the sound of our thousands of horses milling about on the other side. It felt like I had lived with the people forever. It felt like I had been born to them. The breastplate I wore rested in just the right way across my bones. Memories of my mother and father, my sister, my early life in Virginia and my later life at Sweetmore, the war and even my search for Chloe, my life with Mo and Sedge, all this blended in my brain now into a stew of indecipherable ingredients. And yet here was this button, and here was this little noose, both of which I still wore around my neck on the leather thong I had made from a dead man’s belt.
I had been with the people two winters, when one morning Thin Knife sat beside me outside the tipi and, reaching over, lifted Chloe’s button from where it lay against my throat. He rolled it between his fingers. “What does this mean to you?” he asked.
I told him. My woman. Chloe was her name. A house slave. I hated the man who once owned us. He abused her. I was never able to get her from him. She is dead now, I said.
Thin Knife let go of the button and I felt it drop against my throat. “Perhaps you wear it too long,” he said, and then he rose and left.
Moments later Crawls Along and the children left the tipi, and Feather Horse poked her head out and said, “Come sit with me, Kweepoonaduh Tuhmoo.”
I went inside and sat across from her. She said, “You must get your own lodge.”
“If you say I must, then I will,” I answered, although I was hurt to be expelled like this. I had been happy these past few years living with Thin Knife, and I wondered why he wished me gone.
Feather Horse shook her head as if I had spoken this thought out loud. “No,” she said. “It is not because we do not want you here. You will soon find a woman, and you must have your own tipi.”
“What woman?” I asked.
“I see it,” she answered. “I see a woman and you together, riding your horse. She loves you and cares for you and you must provide a home for her. It is all she’s ever wanted, a home, with a man who makes her feel safe.”
“There was a woman. I did not manage to keep her safe.”
“I heard what Thin Knife said. He is wrong about the necklace you wear. The woman I see is happy that you have kept it and worn it so long. You must prepare for her. She is coming soon. I see it. You bring horses to Thin Knife, and Crawls Along and I will make you a lodge.”
“How many horses?” I asked.
Feather Horse thought for a minute, then answered. “It will take fifteen skins to build you a good lodge. Fifteen horses.”
“That is all I have.”
“Get more.”
“What if I bring you the skins instead and you scrape them and sew them? Then how many horses?”
“Even more,” she answered.
There was no arguing with Feather Horse. Vision or not, she usually got her way. So I went on more raids and I captured more horses and I gave them to Thin Knife in exchange for his wives’ work on my tipi.
When Thin Knife heard of Feather Horse’s vision, he suggested that his recently widowed sister-in-law Cocklebur might make a good wife. I was not interested, although Thin Knife said I might give it some time. He told me that she was too early in her grief to consider another husband. I replied that I was too early in mine as well. “You grieve this woman too long,” he said. “It is not healthy for a man to mourn a woman so long.”
Feather Horse was quiet, but when we were alone together again she said, “Cocklebur is not the woman I see. She is a fine woman. She would make a good wife. But she is not the woman I see.”
“Tell me the woman you see,” I said.
“You and Thin Knife should go gather poles for your lodge. This vision is very strong.”
So Thin Knife and I went in search of a stand of cedar. We cut poles and I peeled them and let them season and trimmed sticks into sharp lacing pins. My work on the tipi was done, but when the work on the cover and the liner was completed, Feather Horse and Crawls Along kept it a secret from me. They wished to surprise me, and they did.
We were camped in another canyon. I remember it being west of a hill that was made of white rock, like a huge pile of salt, and that the river had stairsteps of wide flat rocks that the water ran over into pools below. I remember the musical sound of these little waterfalls filling the air. Two tribes had come together and there were many horses, and many tipis, all with their flaps open toward the east. I had gone out with a group to hunt buffalo. We were gone for five days, and we were successful. Crawls Along and her sister Cocklebur and some of the other women had traveled with us to process the meat and make it transportable back to o
ur village. I myself had killed two buffalo, and I was proud of this. The meat had already been cut up and rolled into the hides by Crawls Along and Cocklebur. I would give some to Thin Knife’s household and some to Cocklebur’s in thanks for her help. Already, at our village, the scaffolds were built on which to hang thin strips of meat to dry for our winter provisions.
I remember riding into camp and hearing the women set up their trilling calls at our arrival. Li-li-li-li-li-li. They swarmed around us, patting the hides covering the meat on our travois, smiling and laughing. I dismounted, and a boy took my horse and led it away.
And then I saw it. A new tipi standing next to Thin Knife’s. My shield sat outside the door. I stood staring at it. Feather Horse laughed and took my hand and led me inside. Thin Knife and Crawls Along followed, and outside many of the tribe gathered around as I entered my home for the first time.
Words fail in telling you the beauty of a tipi, and particularly my tipi. Its red cedar poles met at the top, the blue sky visible though the smoke flap. A bed had been made for me with a mat of fresh prairie grass and a buffalo robe. To one side of the door was a stack of buffalo chips, and to the other, a kettle and stabbing sticks and a buffalo horn ladle. I learned later that several people in the tribe had contributed these things to furnishing my household.
“Is he to cook?” Thin Knife asked. The group laughed at the absurdity of this.
“These are for his woman,” Feather Horse answered.
Thin Knife shrugged and shook his head. “You will eat with us until she comes. My wife says you will find your woman soon.”
Feather Horse turned to me and held out her hands. “Give me your things,” she said. I handed her my bow and quiver and Mo’s haversack, and she hung them from the poles of my lodge.
And then I noticed, hanging from another lodge pole, a cradleboard, beautifully lined with raccoon fur. “Your faith in this vision is very strong to have made this,” I said to Feather Horse.
She nodded.
“Perhaps you will have a son,” Thin Knife said, clapping me on the back.
That night I lay alone in my new lodge and stared up at the smoke spiraling out toward the stars. I rolled over and stared at the empty spaces across the fire. Above the emptiness the cradleboard hung expectantly from a cedar pole. Outside the river ran over its rocks, gurgling and splashing.
I wanted to believe in Feather Horse’s vision. I wanted to believe in it as strongly as she did, but I did not think I was ready to love anyone besides Chloe, and it seemed that I must sleep alone until I got ready. It was too quiet in the tipi. I fingered the button at my throat.
I remembered Chloe’s fingers trawling the fabric of her dress as we sat on the deck of the steamer that was to take us across the Mississippi River. I remembered her begging Master Wilson as he held his gun on me. All I had ever wanted was to get her away from him, and I had failed, and now I was told that a woman was about to appear in my life, a woman who would make me happy, but I could not believe it. I stared again at the empty spaces across the tipi. I got up and placed another buffalo chip on the fire and watched the sparks rise into the sky. I missed my family. I missed listening to Thin Knife rolling around with one wife or the other. I missed the soft breath of the sleeping children. For the first time since I had been with the people, I cried, stifling the sounds of it against the fur of my robe made from the tahseewo.
THE TRIBE took on a collective excitement over Feather Horse’s vision. They were as happy for me as if my woman had already arrived, as if she were already heavy with my child. I could not speak my true feelings to any of them. I would not insult them in this way. I would not insult Feather Horse’s vision.
As I walked through the village old men patted me on the back and nodded their approval. Old women smiled and tittered to each other. The young girls looked at me expectantly, and my friends pointed out various women as they walked by carrying firewood or bladders of water. When we broke camp and were on the move Thin Knife or Beetle would often come riding up to me and mention a name. “She is the one riding up there on the red horse. She would make a good wife.”
I tried to go along. I tried to notice if a woman was pretty, or seemed strong, or cared for her sister’s children particularly well. More than once Thin Knife nudged me in the ribs when Cocklebur walked by. “She would make a good wife,” he said again.
I shook my head.
“Perhaps her cousin,” he said one day. “She is young. You would have to give some horses to her father.”
I shook my head again.
“Kweepoonaduh Tuhmoo, you must get more horses. A woman is not easily acquired without horses. We should raid that settlement. What do the whites call it? The one near the edge of the plains.”
“Drunken Bride?” I answered.
Thin Knife laughed, and then repeated the name phonetically, so that it sounded like the German I’d heard spoken in the Hill Country. “Drun-ken-bride. Haa. We should go there. You will need more horses.”
Our village was then four days’ ride from your little town. Many of the men chose to go on this raid, twenty or thirty of us. As we prepared to leave, the women surrounded us and smiled and laughed. The children called to their fathers to bring them something. Thin Knife leaned down from his horse and kissed his wives, and Crawls Along held up the children for him to pat and say goodbye to. Feather Horse came over to me and laid a hand on my leg. “It will not be long,” she said. She smiled and stepped back as I wheeled my horse around and we left the village.
It was a leisurely ride. There were no women with us, and I appreciated the reprieve from the constant commenting and nudging I had experienced in the village. Halfway there we stopped along a stream that seemed familiar to me, and Thin Knife told me that this was where I had been captured. I recognized it then, the boulder I had taken cover behind, and where Thin Knife had hit me in the head with the butt of my rifle.
Outside Drunken Bride we painted up and then rode right through your town, in broad daylight, right down the middle of the street. Two of our men stampeded the horses out of a stable, and let loose every one that was tied to the hitching posts. Another smashed the window of the store, and then dragged the merchant out into the street and stabbed him and took his scalp.
I chased a white woman on my horse, simply for the fun of chasing her. I did not want her. She did not know this, and I laughed to watch her run as I wheeled my horse in and out, in front of her now, beside her now, behind her now, on the other side of her now. She screamed and stumbled over her stupid skirts. She fell in the mud. I bore down on her as if I would scoop her up and carry her away with me, and then at the last minute I rode off, whooping and yelling. I wheeled again, turning around, as though I would come for her once more, and she scrambled away, and crammed herself under a house, her skirt disappearing like the tail of a rattlesnake.
The townsmen were shooting at us now, but they were panicked and shot wildly, and our medicine was good. A few captives were taken. Two young boys who were twins, and a young girl. A man was killed and scalped in the graveyard beside the church. Another in front of the jail. A third outside the saloon. I can look now through the bars of my window and see these places.
We rode on. The horses we’d stampeded were gathered into a herd. We stopped in a small ravine nearby and decided to split up, one party going with the horses and captives out into the plains for safety, the rest of us in the other direction, toward some of the farms outside of Drunken Bride. I went with the latter party.
We rode to a farm where again we stampeded the horses, then entered the house. There was no one there. We stole food and some red flannel and a Bible. We pushed over furniture. We broke dishes. We pulled the mattress out into the yard and cut it open, letting the feathers fly into the wind. We killed the pigs and left them there, for we did not eat pork. And then we set the house on fire and rode on.
At the next farm we found a man and a woman cowering in the loft of the cabin. We shot them and ra
nsacked the house the same as we had done to the one before. We took the horses. I found and took two books, for I still liked to read, and once I had satisfied myself with them, I could trade them. I slipped the books into Mo’s haversack.
It was late afternoon as we moved on to the next farm. We watched it from a distance. Smoke puffed from the chimney. There were three horses in a corral, and one of the boys riding with us sneaked down and creaked open the gate and let them loose. And then a man came wandering across the yard. A short man, singing “Old Dan Tucker.” He was drunk, but I recognized his gait. I recognized his swagger. Thin Knife raised his bow, but I reached over and pushed the arrow down. “No,” I said. “He is mine.”
“Why should you have his scalp and not me?”
“He is the man who used to own me,” I said.
Thin Knife nodded. “This one,” he said to the other warriors, “belongs to Kweepoonaduh Tuhmoo.” The men gave their agreement. I would be the one to kill the drunken white man singing his way across the yard.
Seeing Master Wilson there, right in the open, was almost more than I could bear. My past, which I thought I had shrugged off, flooded back into me. My memories became distinguishable and vivid again. The cane fields waving in the breeze. The hard handle of the knife in my hand. The stench of the swamp as I waded in to cut wood. Breech and his broken neck. The lash whistling through the air. The sound of the gun when Wilson shot me. The splash of river as I fell in. Chloe pleading with me to get her away from him.
I could have shot him right where he stood, but I wanted Joseph Wilson to die knowing exactly who had killed him. I climbed onto my horse and the rest of the warriors followed. We whooped and yelled and called out our war cries. The others surrounded the house while I rode down hard on Master Wilson. He fell to his knees. He had no weapon, nothing with which to defend himself. I held the point of my lance against his chest. I stared into his eyes. I enjoyed the terror I saw there. He begged for his life. “I am but a poor man,” he said. “Please do not kill me.”
The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson Page 26