The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  Coromantee-Panther showed himself to be courageous. Once while hunting a bear attacked his uncle, who would later say a red-colored spirit—a spirit the color of war—entered his nephew, giving him strength. Right when the bear jumped on the uncle, Coromantee-Panther leapt on the animal’s back, slit its throat, and pushed the bear off the uncle before he suffocated from the weight.

  “That was risky, eh?” The uncle spat out red phlegm and laughed along with his adopted nephew. When they brought the dead bear to the village, the family feasted on its roasted ribs as the uncle told of the courage of Coromantee-Panther. The tale would be repeated for many years among the people. Coromantee-Panther did not have a chance to prove himself in battle, however, for the village in which he lived was called a “white” town because it was committed to peace. There were other villages throughout the Creek confederation who believed in war, and they were called “red” villages. The young men of these villages would shed blood without thought. Yet Coromantee-Panther was a hunter who brought more than enough meat to his adopted family regularly, proving himself capable of supporting a wife. There were many young women who wanted to marry him, too, though they knew he’d probably been a slave and he continually repeated his intention to leave the village and go south.

  In times to come there would be other Negroes who made their reputations, men who contained warriors’ spirits. Who would marry Creek women who birthed strong children and some of those children would prove themselves, men like Ninnywageechee and Black Factor, men with dark-dark skin and bushy hair, who rode hard without fear and spilled much blood in honorable ways.

  The eventual wife of Coromantee-Panther was a young woman of the highest rank, from the Wind clan. She had strong ankles, lean calves, and a beguiling space between her top front teeth. Perhaps she was beautiful, though all young women are beautiful in their ways, and this is not that kind of story. Like all offspring she had a name, given by her mother, but we shall call her “Woman-of-the-Wind.”

  She caught the eye of Coromantee-Panther by indirection, because she did not place herself in front of him to win notice. Rather, her absence reckoned with his interest and he began to look for her. To watch her cutting meat into strips for drying. Other young women came to Woman-of-the-Wind to tell her that Coromantee-Panther had asked for her. She would look up from pounding dried corn to see him smiling at her. She was self-conscious about the space between her two front teeth; also, she considered too much humor to be a sign of foolishness, but she couldn’t help but smile back at him.

  Though the young Negro wasn’t as high of status as Woman-of-the-Wind, she was taken aback by her feelings when he offered her the skin of the bear that he had killed.

  “I have much affection for you,” Coromantee-Panther said. His Creek language skills were rudimentary, but he had practiced that phrase with his adopted uncle. When he touched his chest and gestured to Woman-of-the-Wind, she put aside the corn. She took his hand and walked with him deep into the woods to a spot where they lay on the bearskin. He was not an experienced lover, but his sincerity made up for what he did not know. He pleased her greatly that night and many nights to come.

  Soon, Woman-of-the-Wind and Coromantee-Panther were married with the blessing of her clan, and he moved his belongings into her family’s hut, as a married Creek man did. At least, that is what happened during those times, before everything began to change.

  The Daughter of a Powerful Union

  The young woman’s devotion to Coromantee-Panther was strong, but she did not want to hinder him on his journey south. Thus, on the day that he finally left the village—twenty-three moons after he had arrived—when the elders gave him a horse and supplies, and had taught him to read the marks on the sides of the trees to find villages that would be friendly to him, Woman-of-the-Wind did not inform Coromantee-Panther that her womb was heavy with his seed. She only dearly loved the twin babies that she gave birth to, a boy and a girl. The girl’s name was Nila. The boy’s name was Bushy Hair. Both children would have their father’s courageous, red heart, though each would take their own path to claim that mettle.

  In time, the twins grew, and Woman-of-the-Wind was courted by men of other clans in the village. Not only was she desired because of her high status, but also, she had been the only mate of Coromantee-Panther, who had loved her dearly. On the day that her husband left, he had clung to Woman-of-the-Wind and wept before she pushed him away, telling him go to the south. Go to his freedom, and she would remember him always, and Coromantee-Panther had slid onto the bare back of the horse the elders had given him for his journey. Woman-of-the-Wind would never marry or mate again.

  Surely, such a woman was extraordinary, and when the daughter of Woman-of-the-Wind came of age, Nila had many suitors as well. She was a rarity in her village, beautiful in a very odd way. Nila had her father’s dark-brown skin, his kinky hair, and his warmth. She had her mother’s entrancing space between her top teeth and her high status. Frequently, young men from her village and other surrounding villages came to present Nila with meat and softened deer skins to win her favor, but Nila did not want an ordinary man for her husband. She was arrogant, and her weakness was her vanity. She had been told too frequently how wonderful she was, that, as the child of Coromantee-Panther and Woman-of-the-Wind, there was no one as special as she was. Thus, when a handsome, blond Scotsman named Dylan Cornell began to travel to the village for trade, Nila accepted his proposal of marriage.

  Woman-of-the-Wind tried to intervene; she told her daughter that she’d had a bad dream about Dylan Cornell, but Nila would not listen. It was only after she married the white man that the wisdom of her mother’s dream rang. Dylan told her that he would not be moving to Nila’s village, as Creek men did, and that he would only visit every three moons. Also, he revealed that he had another wife, a white woman who lived far on the other side of the Oconee River, in a town where other white people lived. When Nila told Dylan that she would travel with him, that she did not mind sharing his dwelling with another wife so long as they could all live peacefully, he laughed at her. He told Nila she looked like a Negro. The only way he could carry her to the east of the Oconee was as his slave, for when Nila had been a very little girl, the law had changed in the territory where Oglethorpe had landed: Negro slavery was now legal.

  Nila could not believe her husband had dared to compare her to a slave. Her heart filled with red anger—the inheritance of Coromantee-Panther—and air whistled though the space in her front teeth. Nila poked her finger in Dylan’s chest and told him the obscurities of her mind, and then her husband struck her.

  She touched her cheek in shock, but her heart was still red. “I would sleep very lightly, if I were you, Dylan Cornell. For I am going to burn your manhood with coals. And I would be careful about eating as well. I will treat you like a sturgeon and poison you.”

  Yet Nila did not keep her word. She did not burn or kill or poison her husband, for he sidled next to her and begged her forgiveness. He stroked her kinky hair and told her he did not know what had come over him, and Nila’s red anger paled, and she consented to lie with him. It would be like this every time Dylan struck her on his visits to the west. He would fool Nila into believing that his nature had changed and she would believe him until the moment he struck her again and called her names that began with “black.” Dylan told her she was a “black wench” or she was a “black devil.” He told her she looked like a slave.

  Yet in those early days Nila still held out hope, and when she became pregnant Dylan was tender with her. Their child was born in an interval between Dylan’s visits. When he returned, Nila allowed Dylan to rename the baby “Jonathan,” though she had called the boy “Micco.” Moons after the baby’s birth there were two more visits where no striking occurred and Nila reasoned that time had changed her husband. However, on the subsequent visit once the baby was walking, Dylan began to strike Nila again and it was worse than before.

  Nila did not dare tell anyone abo
ut how she suffered with her Scottish husband, especially Bushy Hair, who was protective of his twin sister as he had been the baby to emerge first on the day that they were born. Her arrogance kept her from admitting that she had been foolish not to listen to her mother’s dream. She kept her shame inside, for she didn’t want her family to be ridiculed in the village, for the people to marvel that the extraordinary daughter of Coromantee-Panther and Woman-of-the-Wind had thrown herself away on a white man who beat her.

  Nila learned to raise her arms to catch the blows so that her bruises would not show on her face. She learned to hope that Dylan’s visits every three moons would end, but he continued to visit. Sometimes she was lucky and sitting in the moon house when his visits occurred, for Dylan did not know how to count the days to avoid her womanly seclusions. Yet other times, she was not fortunate, and she tolerated his embraces, for Dylan would force himself on her. Nila drank a tisane made from wild carrot seeds to keep from being with his child. On the rare times that didn’t work, Nila would brew another tisane of wild ginger root, drinking this to expel the contents of her womb, or, as a last resort, boil the berries of the pokeweed.

  The Incident of the Cracker

  Nila’s only son would grow to be tall, but Micco looked neither Negro nor Creek nor Scottish. His hair was dark, but it was not kinky; it crisped into tight waves. After his fourth year, his skin darkened to a brown that was the color of pecans. He had picked up selfishness from Dylan Cornell, whose visits had slowed to every six moons. The Creek had not learned yet about locks or being selfish with food and goods—that would come much later—but Dylan inculcated a love of property to his son. Whenever other children picked up something belonging to Micco in his hut, he would snatch it back.

  “Mine! Mine!” the boy would scream.

  Micco soon became a very lonely child, for other children began to avoid him, and, because he was a boy, when he reached the age of four or five it was frowned upon for him to hover around his mother and the women of the village. Though he ardently looked forward to his white father’s visits, Micco didn’t receive much attention from his father, either, except when his father insisted that he learn how to read so he could know the most important words to the white men besides their laws: the book that Dylan called the Bible. These lessons were so important to the lonely little boy that when his father hit his mother Micco turned his head and tried to ignore his mother’s weeping. He would lie at the foot of the spot where his parents slept and pretend not to hear Dylan forcing himself on Nila, her sad begging for Dylan to please stop, because Micco lived for the mornings when his father would roughly nudge him with a foot and say, “Good morning, boy.” This wasn’t much, but Micco grabbed at these bits of affection, as children crave the love of their parents.

  His only friend was his uncle, Bushy Hair, who spent time with the boy when he was little and took over his manhood training when he grew older. This training was Bushy Hair’s responsibility, as was the way of the people. Like his sister, Bushy Hair had his father’s courage as well as his sweet charm and kindness. He talked to the boy, listening as if he were a grown man. Bushy Hair did not laugh at Micco, either, when his arrows did not fly straight at low-flying birds or slow deer, and his voice was not harsh when Micco ran from the water of the creek when a fish bit his hand. Bushy Hair was patient. When Micco eventually shot an arrow straight and killed a fat bird, and when he withstood the gnaws of the fish on his hand and threw it on the banks of the creek, Bushy Hair smiled and told the boy, well done, nephew. You are a great hunter, and Micco felt much love inside.

  This peace that Micco felt would be broken, because in his fifteenth year there was trouble between the people of the village and a white man who had settled on the other side of the Oconee River. The people called him a “cracker,” for the sound of his whip when driving his five head of cattle right up to the boundaries of the village. The cracker was a stringy man in both hair and body, and ornery, too. He didn’t try to keep his cattle from running through the village cornfield, laughing when women had frantically waved to warn him. He had made obscene gestures at the women as well. Several times, men of the village had ridden out to the cracker’s farm, a shoddy place with a tiny cabin he had erected without the permission of the people. The men had talked to the cracker, warning him about his animals. He would nod his head in agreement but then kept driving his cattle onto the village grounds.

  One morning a village woman was not quick enough to grab her toddling child from the path of the cracker’s cattle and her child was trampled to death. Though the village was a “white” place of peace, this insult could not remain unanswered. A group of younger men rode out to the place where the cracker had set up his pathetic farm, but the cracker was ready for a fight. He pulled out his long gun and trained it on the four men who stood in front of him. However, the cracker had not considered that his back was unprotected. There was a fifth man behind him: Bushy Hair, who made quick work of the cracker and left him dead.

  The cracker’s wife had been standing at the window of her cabin watching the scene play out. She had screamed when she saw Bushy Hair hit her husband with his ax. He had been so quick she hadn’t been able to warn the cracker. She screamed more, a sound of hopelessness, and one of the men wanted to go inside the cabin and kill the wife. This was understandable as this man was the father of the dead toddler.

  Yet the three other men did not want to harm the cracker’s wife; they still wanted to adhere to peaceful ways as much as possible. Bushy Hair listened to both sides, then asked the toddler’s father to leave the cracker’s wife unharmed. They had solved the problem of blood revenge, according to Creek ways. In times past, if someone in one village was killed in anger by someone in another village, the two places would get together, consult, and the culprit would be handed over to whichever village had been wronged. The white woman’s man was dead, Bushy Hair reasoned. She wouldn’t remain, especially since they were taking her husband’s cattle back to the village.

  Perhaps Bushy Hair’s kindness had been his mistake, for the cracker’s wife found her way east of the Oconee and reported the killing of her husband to a headman in a town populated by white people. Bushy Hair found this out when his brother-in-law came for a visit only a moon after the killing.

  Upon his arrival, Dylan Cornell marched straight to the elders of The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees. Standing in the ceremonial grounds—turning his body so that the sun highlighted his yellow hair—Dylan declared that whoever had killed the cracker had broken the law and must be surrendered to the leaders of the white men.

  The head elder scratched his chin, unconcerned by Dylan’s passion.

  “Whose law?” he asked.

  Dylan swept his arm. “The law of the government of this land!”

  “Whose government? Whose land?”

  The debate went on in this circular fashion. The other elders asked questions, such as, would the white man’s government come to the village? No, Dylan said. The cracker only had been one man. No one was coming this far out to avenge him, but the murder was a matter of honor. The elders tried to explain to Dylan that indeed the cracker had violated honor according to the Creek ways, but Dylan did not listen.

  Someone else asked permission to speak: it was Bushy Hair.

  “You’re shaming our family, my brother.” He told the truth. Nila was not at the meeting of only men, but the male members of the Wind clan sat in the gathering, and they were mortified.

  Dylan Cornell left the next day, and Nila was happy to see him go. Yet within only one moon he returned. He professed that he missed his son dearly and that he wanted to take Micco on a trading trip across the Oconee. Nila didn’t want Micco to go. She’d had a dream that Dylan would try to take her son from her, but she knew if she tried to stop her husband, she would have to tell the people in the village what she had been enduring at his hands. She was frightened of revealing her shame, and she was frightened of losing her son. It was a prison m
ade by the violent hands of her husband, but she had one option left to her. She asked her brother to accompany Dylan and Micco on the trading trip, and she was relieved that Dylan agreed. Not only that, he promised Bushy Hair much bounty.

  It was dark in the early morning when the two men and the boy left. Only Dylan rode a horse with a saddle. The other two rode their horses bareback. There was much friendly talk from Dylan because Dylan did not know that his brother-in-law despised him. Though Bushy Hair had no idea that the white man had physically abused Nila over the years—he did not have the gift of dreaming, like his mother and sister—he was repulsed by the white man on general principle, for over the years Dylan had earned other marks of contempt.

  The white man did not partake in the sacred green corn celebration.

  No one in the village ever wanted to hunt with him, either, for Dylan could not use a bow and arrow, only his long gun. And he stomped through the forest like a full-grown bear, too, which scared away the game.

  Further, while it was true that Dylan was expert in the language of the Creek people, he’d used his expertise to whine fluently about the killing of the cracker, yet hadn’t uttered one sentence of sympathy for the toddler who had been trampled.

  Micco had no idea the enmity that his uncle held toward his father. He was happy to be in the company of his two favorite men and didn’t question why his usually sweet uncle only grunted in response to Dylan’s chatter. Yet halfway on the journey to the Oconee River, Micco was awakened by the sounds of struggle between his uncle and father. They were fiercely fighting, and unlike most men who bully women, his father was not backing down from the fight. He was heavier and taller than Bushy Hair and this gave him an advantage. The two men rolled on the ground in battle, and when Bushy Hair finally got the best of Micco’s father, the white man called out for help, using his child’s English name.