Cries from the Earth

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I speak for them,” White Bird claimed. “It is at times such as these that the strong must speak for the weak.”

  But Joseph shook his head. “Don’t you remember what the Shadow squaw man named Chapman told us when we were at Lapwai to choose our land with Cut-Off Arm? He described what he had seen in a war between Indians and the white men: some of us would be killed; many more would be badly wounded and maimed for the rest of their lives; we would have all our horses and cattle taken from us; and then, the Shadows will force us to go far away to Eeikish Pah, the hot country of Indian Territory, where they will make us live apart from one another.”

  Joseph could see how most of them, old and young, were deep in thought—weighing the consequences of fighting the inevitable. But he knew he had lost their hearts.

  With a sigh, he eventually confessed, “We are the few, against the many and the strong. Let us make the best peace we can with the white man.”

  All those gathered around him had grown so silent that he could hear the crackle of the fire.

  “Is there any more talk?” Joseph asked. He slowly looked from one to another.

  The war supporters averted their eyes, staring into the flames, a barely suppressed anger darkening their stony faces. So, perhaps he had silenced them—for now.

  “Very well then,” Joseph finally admitted in little more than a whisper. “We must spend our last few days here among these old places where our people have come for many, many generations.… Then we will go onto the reservation to begin a new life meant to save those generations of us yet to come.”

  Chapter 6

  Season of Hillal

  1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  THE INDIANS.

  A Fight That Was Not Reported in This Direction.

  CHICAGO, May 29.—Lieutenant General Sheridan has a dispatch from Red Cloud agency confirming the news of the Indian engagement reported last night. Two runners have come into that agency giving the particulars of the location and the killed and wounded, the same as the Bismarck dispatch, and saying that Sitting Bull led the band which was attacked.

  Oh, how he wanted the young woman to look his way, to acknowledge him, to smile as she slowly lowered her eyes in that woman way.

  He was no longer a boy. No longer merely a young man. In the last three winters, this warrior known as Shore Crossing had become a man of the Nee-Me-Poo, like his father, Eagle Robe, had been. Even though this handsome warrior was already married, he found himself eager to seduce a beautiful young woman from Joseph’s Wallowa band, to make her his wife, too.

  He hoped she would see him riding in today’s war parade, the tel-lik-leen, a traditional practice of their people when the bands gathered here every summer on these ancient camping grounds in the meadows at Tepahlewam. This summer, a new, martial edge had been added to the ancient procession. This year, the young warriors didn’t merely sing their songs and strut in their finest before the eligible women. Instead, for the past ten days the young men had been parading through camp shouting curses upon the Shadows, vowing vengeance upon the settlers for taking their lands, death to the army for protecting those white thieves. With each new day the war fervor tension grew around this grand procession, each afternoon’s parade more like a declaration of hostilities than the last.

  “Do you see her yet?” Sarpsis Ilppilp, called Red Moccasin Tops, asked in a whisper, leaning close at Shore Crossing’s ear.

  Red Moccasin Tops was seated right behind his older cousin. The two of them had grown up together, more like brothers than cousins. Sun Necklace, Red Moccasin Tops’s father, had not given his son a pony to ride for this day’s parade, so Shore Crossing offered his cousin a place on his old pony. Why not ride two on a horse? After all, this pair of swaggering youngsters had been worked into some cocky strutting with the rest of those older, veteran warriors of many fights against the Lakota and Blackfoot. Yes, why not ride together on a horse? These two were more than cousins; they were best friends in everything.

  Shore Crossing shook his head, fearful she would not show up. “No, I can’t see her yet.”

  “Tell me when you do,” Red Moccasin Tops suggested. “Then I will keep my eye on her to learn when she looks at you.”

  His cousin was a good young man, part Cayuse in blood, grandson of Tomahas, one of the murderers of missionary Marcus and Narcissa Whitman many years before. What a terrible, troubled legacy that tragedy was to those Upper bands, those who had signed the treaty with the white man and stayed put on the reservation.

  Despite the growing strain between those who advocated going to war and those who counseled peace, Shore Crossing remained hopeful the beautiful one would look up at him and smile beneath those long, black lashes, telling him he should come courting her that night when the sun sank and the fires glowed. None of them had much longer before they would have to go onto the reservation. If he was going to grab another wife by strutting, preening, and crowing in the old way … this was the time to do it. The last any of his people would ever know of freedom.

  For ten days already the Non-Treaty bands had been celebrating here by the Camas Prairie lake. As it had always been, this time of the earth’s warming was a season for the young of their people. Far, far back into any man’s memory, this had always been a time for courting and coupling.

  Hillal, this “season of melting mountain snow and rising rivers,” was more like a time of melting his heart and the rising of his fevered manhood for Shore Crossing. If he could no longer be a fighting warrior for the Nee-Me-Poo in the old way, then he was at least eager to take another wife.

  Riding here at the tail end of this daily tel-lik-leen winding its way through the encampment—here in the traditional position of greatest danger, where those warriors at the rear of the march protected the village from their pursuers—Shore Crossing kept his old horse behind all the rest so that he and his cousin secured this position of honor.

  Glancing over the shoulders of those just ahead of them in the parade, Shore Crossing could see that it would be only moments before he himself entered the village where the old men and the women were setting aside their labors of drying meat and the kouse roots in the sun to sing and keen as the procession threaded its way among the lodges. Up and down the gauntlet, white men beat on hand-held drums, singing their songs of celebration, while dogs barked, and children ran alongside the horses’ legs, everyone laughing. Despite where the bands had been ordered to go, despite what they had been forced to leave behind, despite all the rest … this was still a good time in Shore Crossing’s life.

  Between the lodges, the old ones were rising from pieces of canvas they had spread upon the ground. There they split open the camas roots and lay them to dry in the sun. Those old men and women were waving their arms in joy, laughing and singing as Shore Crossing drew closer to the outlying lodges. He thought he caught a glimpse of her—just enough of her face as she glanced his way, then quickly turned to watch something else. Of course, he told himself, she did not want to seem too eager to be his.

  Oh, it was her! He kept staring as he rode closer and closer to the lodges, not daring to take his eyes off her lest she flick those dark, black-cherry eyes at him for but an instant. He must keep watching so he could catch her glancing at him, to let her realize that he knew she wanted him, too.

  A sudden shrill screech penetrated his reverie.

  Shore Crossing looked down in surprise, finding the old man at his knee, waving his arms wildly and shouting.

  “See what you do? See what you do?” shrieked Heyoom Moxmox, the one known as Yellow Grizzly Bear.

  Jerking back on the reins, Shore Crossing discovered his old pony was trampling on a piece of canvas, its hooves crushing and scattering some camas from the cedar-bark baskets.

  Nearly under the pony itself an old woman crouched, Yellow Grizzly Bear’s wife. She was frantically scooping up the roots as the frightened horse pranced back and forth. The old man swung his fists at the animal, pounding i
t on the ribs, yelling at the young rider.

  “You fool!” the old man screamed in a reedy voice as he lunged to seize the reins.

  Below them, the old woman was sobbing loudly as she flung aside her two-foot-long digging stick and swept up the crushed roots with the side of her hand, gathering them into a fold of her dirty dress.

  Shore Crossing pleaded, “I am sorry!”

  “You play so brave, don’t you, young man?” Yellow Grizzly Bear shouted, trembling with fury. “Like a warrior, you ride right over my woman’s hard-worked food!”

  Struggling to yank his pony away from the old man, from the sobbing woman, off that torn canvas on the ground where he had made a mess of the roots, Shore Crossing promised, “I will try to make it up to you—”

  “If you are so brave,” Yellow Grizzly Bear growled, seizing hold of the fringe on the young warrior’s legging, “why don’t you go kill the Shadow who killed your father?”

  Until that moment he had been sorry, truly sorry for the mess he had caused these old people … but in an instant Shore Crossing was of a different heart. Like a sharpened needle, the man’s harsh words had suddenly lanced a festering wound where an evil corruption still poisoned Shore Crossing’s heart.

  He leaned forward and reached down to grab the old man’s wrist, wrenching it from the pony’s reins. Glaring with steady eyes into the wrinkled face of Yellow Grizzly Bear, Shore Crossing spoke with a voice tight as a drumhead: “You will be sorry for your words.”

  By the time he looked up, the rest of the procession was far ahead of him, and the beautiful woman was nowhere to be found among the crowd scattering through the lodges.

  The young man wheeled his pony about and crossed the side of the hill to his lodge where he leaped to the ground alone and ducked inside. Shore Crossing snapped at his wife the moment she questioned his sullen face.

  After tying off the pony to a tent peg, Red Moccasin Tops drew back the lodge door and entered. He settled near his cousin, but far enough away so that it did not make Shore Crossing angry. When her husband would not explain himself, his wife threw up her hands in exasperation and left, shaking her head in disgust.

  It did not matter to Shore Crossing, for here he could sit out the rest of the afternoon away from the accusing glares of those who had been standing near the old man and woman, all of those who had mocked him again because he had not taken his vengeance on the white man who had killed his father.

  Didn’t they remember that Eagle Robe made his son promise not to harm the white man?

  A promise made to his father. A promise given a dying man was a sacred thing! If Shore Crossing had any facet of character, then it was honor, enough honor that he would not break his promise to his dying father.

  For three winters he had carried the onus of this failure upon his head. Even though everyone knew of the promise he was forced to make to his father, nonetheless there had been three winters of the cold and unfriendly stares, three winters of the whispered murmurings at his back.

  By the time his wife returned to the lodge long after the finish of the grand war parade this day, Shore Crossing and his cousin had already nursed at the canteen filled with the white man’s whiskey acquired from one of the Grangeville and Mount Idaho traders who had come among the Nee-Me-Poo while the bands were united there at Tepahlewam. He knew that this stinging water sometimes made a man a fool. But he was also certain that at other times the whiskey could give a man the courage to do what he would otherwise not.

  So that day had grown old by the time his wife discovered Shore Crossing and Red Moccasin Tops in the lodge beside the dying fire, both of them red-eyed and mumbling thick-tongued to themselves as her husband sharpened his knife on an old whetstone.

  “Aren’t you going to take me to the Kissing Dance?” she asked.

  His knife stopped in his hands. He suddenly thought of the beautiful one he wanted so badly. “Tonight?”

  “Yes,” his wife answered him. “It begins soon.”

  Glancing at his cousin, he grumbled, “Do you think—”

  “You should be there,” Red Moccasin Tops interrupted with a wicked grin. Then he leaned close to Shore Crossing so the wife would not hear of the young woman as he whispered, “If the girl does not kiss you as her husband-to-be tonight, I am sure she will kiss some other young man before the dancing is done!”

  After quickly re-braiding his hair, Shore Crossing left the lodge, ordering his wife to stay behind, that he did not want her to attend the grand dance. He promised that he would return and that they would couple—which seemed to satisfy her.

  He and Red Moccasin Tops started toward the singing that reached their ears in the darkness. Shore Crossing’s head was numb, but his heart was singing. This would be the night he could make his intentions known to all.

  Already the drums were throbbing fervently as he neared the grand circle, shouldered his way through the crowd, casting his eyes over every young woman, searching for the one. After he had stumble-footed it halfway around the crescent, someone suddenly grabbed his arm, stopped him—pulling him around. It was the young woman’s older brother. Hahkauts Ilppilp.

  With a sneer, this warrior called Red Grizzly Bear asked, “Who are you looking for, Shore Crossing?”

  “Why do you care?” he demanded of the brother.

  On either side of Red Grizzly Bear gathered a few of White Bird’s young warriors, mockery in their eyes. Red Moccasin Tops stepped up beside Shore Crossing. Together, their breath made a cloud strong with the stench of stale whiskey.

  The brother sniffed at their faces, then chortled, “Ho, look at you! A married man, but you come anyway: ready for a dance with my sister, are you? All of you, look at Shore Crossing!” he roared at his companions. “So pretty and handsome in public, isn’t he? But everyone knows he is nothing more than a coward.”

  Shore Crossing crumpled Red Grizzly Bear’s hide vest in both hands, spewing his anger: “Do you really mean to call me a coward?”

  Seizing Shore Crossing’s wrists, the brother flung the hands away from his vest. “I call you that, yes! You are nothing less than a coward. Look—back there on the Salmon—don’t you see your father’s grave in the country we are being forced to leave behind? He was murdered by a Shadow, but you don’t have the manhood to kill the one who took your father’s life!”

  All around him even more of the young men and women were squeezing closer, drawn to the noisy confrontation, many of them already sniggering behind their hands. Shore Crossing prayed the pretty one was nowhere near to see his shame, but he realized she would hear of it all too soon. The dance drums pounded in his aching head even louder, the shrill keening of the women caused such pain in his ears, and now the brother’s burning rebuke coursed a tongue of cold fire to his marrow with a terrible, unquenchable pain.

  Then he remembered what he had told the old man who had mocked him in just this way.

  “Today I told Yellow Grizzly Bear what I now declare to all of you: you will be sorry for what you have said to me!”

  Shore Crossing turned on his heel, pushing his way through the sniggering crowd, hurrying as far away from that shame as he could take himself, realizing that he had just breathed life anew into a fire long smoldering.

  Later that night while he sat in his lodge with Red Moccasin Tops, Shore Crossing wept angry, bitter tears as he swilled down more of the whiskey from those two canteens traded from a Boston Man.

  “Don’t they realize that I never returned to kill the Shadow who murdered my father because I had given him my word?”

  “They are silly fools,” his wife consoled as she came up to settle next to him.

  But Shore Crossing pushed her aside angrily and swilled more of the whiskey before he continued, “Don’t these growlers realize that if I had killed the Shadow who murdered my father, it would only have given the white men and their soldiers just the excuse they needed to kill more of our people?”

  “Your wife is right,” Red Mocc
asin Tops slurred, thick-tongued himself. “The others are blind fools who cannot see that you have much courage to keep your vow.”

  “No more!” Shore Crossing snapped, the fiery burn of the whiskey raw at the back of his throat. “I have been a slave to that stupid vow long enough. Don’t you see I have been a prisoner of the mistake I made for too many seasons already!”

  Fort Lapwai

  June 13, 1877

  Mamma Dear,

  It seems a long time since I wrote to you, as I did not write all last week, but I suppose you will find so many of my letters waiting for you when you get home, you will think I spent all my time writing.

  John is in Portland and I am awfully lonely without him. I do hope he won’t make many trips of this sort away from us. I know, too, he wants to be back as much as we want him here. He left a week ago today, and I hope he will be home a week from tomorrow, but Major Boyle and Mr. Monteith told me they don’t think it possible for him to come so soon. I will be dolefully disappointed if he doesn’t.

  I hope someplace in your travels you will find some sacks for the children. The evenings and mornings are all too cool for them to play without something, and their present wraps are positively shameful. I wish I had something real common for their play and then something a little better for Sunday School, but we are feeling awfully poor. I have such a time getting them hats. I got Bess a little brown sundown and trimmed it with my pet necktie (a brown one) as I could not get any brown ribbon. John will bring me a couple of sailor hats for Bert from Portland. The hats they bring to this town, 12 miles from us, are perfectly awful.