The Healer's Daughter

by Charlotte Hinger

  She went to the old woman’s leather medicine bundle lying on the floor, pointed toward the fine, gray moss, then gestured toward the collection of plants hanging on the wall. She wanted to know what the woman had used for the infection just now. Where could she find it? Where did it grow? What was it called?

  Immediately the old woman’s hands flew with elaborate movements. Shaking with frustration, Bethany could not think of a way to tell her she didn’t understand.

  The old woman stood and walked over to the hanging bags. She smelled them, then untied one of them, mimicked a person doubled over with stomach pain, and then held up the bag. Bethany nodded. Of course, of course, she understood. They both knew lamb’s-quarter was just right for this ailment.

  Bethany trembled with frustration. She needed this woman. Needed to learn from her. Supplies were becoming desperately short, and she was terrified of picking up a plant that would harm her people.

  She went to the wall and pointed toward a bag. One by one, she worked her way down the row and mimicked each ailment that she used it for. She pointed to the man’s stomach, then toward the wall, and shrugged to show that there was nothing there, nothing she could have used to help the man.

  Once again she was helpless before the flurry of the old woman’s hand movements. Bethany’s eyes filled with tears. Infections were frequent and lethal, and she absolutely had to understand.

  The old woman stared at her stonily, not approving of her loss of control. Bethany pulled herself together and stood rigidly by the bags of plants. Then, as best she could, she began to mimic all the ailments that she didn’t have plants for. After each, Bethany made a sweeping gesture toward the wall, then shrugged, then pointed toward the old woman and held her hands out in prayerful supplication.

  The old woman nodded curtly. She understood.

  Bethany pressed her head between her palms and moved it from side to side, emulating an excruciating headache. Then she went to the wall and removed the bag containing ground charcoal and carried it to the old woman, who sniffed it and then rubbed it between her fingers.

  She frowned and shook her head. That must mean she had never seen it, or didn’t use it. Then the old woman bent over her bundle and pulled out a little pouch containing valerian leaves. Bethany could not think of a way to tell her that she, too, used valerian, but it was not enough for the one-eyed blinding headaches. Nevertheless, the old woman reaffirmed many of Bethany’s herbs, letting her know that she used these, too, and the plants could be found on the prairie.

  But there were so many gaps. So many plants the old woman examined in bewilderment. Clearly, they only grew in Kentucky. How could Bethany learn to substitute? What would she do? Who could teach her? She would probably never see this Indian woman again, and even if she learned to recognize herbs in dried form, it wouldn’t help her to find the growing plants.

  Bethany had heard that Indians were as reserved with their displays of emotion as her own people were expressive. Not wanting to risk the old woman’s disapproval again, she kept her trembling hands hidden beneath her apron. Then suddenly she sank to her knees and wept.

  “Please. I must know. I’ll try to find a way to come to you during the summer when I can harvest seeds and herbs. Surely there’s a time when something grows on this God-forsaken wretched prairie. It can’t just go from scalding heat to the dead of winter year after year.” Childishly, she blurted this out to a woman who could not understand and by her scornful expression certainly did not care.

  The old woman went over to the sleeping man and held the back of her hand to his forehead to check his fever. She nodded at Bethany, then went over to a corner, sat with her legs straight in front of her, and dozed off.

  After Bethany’s sobs subsided, she stared at the old woman’s exhausted, seamed face and wondered who had taught her. Who would replace her when she died?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hawk Woman’s eyes flew open when Walking Buffalo moaned, then turned on the straw bed. She rose stiffly and went to his side. The light gleaming through the glass panel on the stove was enough for her to see that his forehead was dry.

  Soft as a feather, she touched his cheek, hoping the dryness did not mean his high fever had returned. Satisfied that he was mending—his breath was strong and regular, and there was little fever now—she passed her palm over his face in thanksgiving, then crept back into the corner. She would not check his wound until morning when he was fully awake.

  She settled back down on the floor where she had spread a buffalo robe to cushion her old bones. Then she covered herself with the quilts offered by the Nika-Sabe woman.

  Gloomily, she studied the sleeping woman’s beautiful face. For a while as she and this emotional woman had tended to Walking Buffalo, she had forgotten how much she hated the Heavy Eyebrows and even more their strange, colorful variation, the Nika-Sabes, who had caused her people so much new trouble.

  It had taken thousands of years when they first descended to the earth for the Sky People to instill order over the chaos of the land. Thousands of ceremonies, thousands of lives lost to create the majestic Osage, the most profoundly religious of all the tribes. Even here, even now, in the presence of these peculiar people burrowed into the sides of hills, tomorrow would begin with her own people’s ceremonies, their chanting to Grandfather Sun.

  The fire flickered, and the shiny metal on the stove was like the Peeps in the Water disks used in trade by the Heavy Eyebrows. The woman in this dwelling was the first Nika-Sabe she had seen up close. Much killing had taken place over these black-skinned persons. It made no sense to her that Kansas soil was stained with Osage blood over these people when they were as scarce as buffalo on the prairie. The Civil War had split her own people in two, the Great Osage band fighting with the Confederate Army and the Little Osage fighting with the Union.

  She understood wars and colors and tribes and blood, for it had always been so. Her people fought their enemies with mad abandon to protect their land. For centuries war had kept them powerful and lordly. What she did not understand was how her people had been seduced into fighting this white man’s war. Her people had been shoved and shoved and shoved farther west from the time the Heavy Eyebrows first invaded, but through this worthless, silly war, they had lost even more of their tribal land.

  Over the Nika-Sabes. Slaves.

  She knew the word. She understood far too many of the white man’s words. Her people often took Pawnee as slaves or traded them to the Heavy Eyebrows for guns. Slavery she understood.

  But ga-ni-tha, chaos, again! Over and over, a legacy of the Heavy Eyebrows. She loathed the bastardization of the Little People—the contamination of their customs, the confusion. Now her people even dressed their brides in long coats with brassy buttons and silky golden braid jutting out from the shoulders. The coats were prized souvenirs from the white man’s war, and Osage maidens wore them over their traditional dresses. They also now wore top hats with feathers to their weddings. Osage warriors were buried in generals’ dress tunics with United States flags draped upside down over their cairns.

  The Little Old Men, their priests, would say chaos was always present on the earth. It had always been so. Peace came from above. The movements of the heavens were regular, restful, predictable. But Hawk Woman knew no force on the earth had been as swiftly destructive as the disorder brought by the white man.

  Her eyes glistened in the dark. She was a holy woman descended from a long holy line. One of her own lineage had been the very first shy, trembling woman who had woven the covering for the sacred hawk bundle. For four days, this woman, this weaving woman, had stayed at her loom and chanted and followed the instructions for the design given by the Little Old Men. Just so, she herself had worked and wailed and gone without food.

  Hawk Woman glanced at the sacred hawk bundle beside her. She should not be carrying it. A holy man should carry the magic of the Sacred Hawk. But ga-ni-tha, the Heavy Eyebrows’ chaos, had seeped into Osage religion, too. M
any of her own people no longer knew who was holy or who was Hunkah and supposed to wear symbols on the right, or who was of the peaceful Tzi-Sho clan. Even though they still fasted and chanted, they were no longer sure. Some of the tribes had even started including the white man’s Christ in their morning chants.

  Hawk Woman stared at the sleeping Nika-Sabe. She, herself, could sit for days huddled in a buffalo robe in perfect silence, still as a mountain. Unmoving as the North Star. But this woman, this Nika-Sabe, would never sit. She would be up soon, doing, doing, charging about with Heavy Eyebrow energy, despite her dark face.

  Hawk Woman knew how to put her own dreaming aside and care for her people. To be completely in the world when it was necessary. But this woman didn’t have a bit of the Sky People in her. She would not know how to sit.

  Hawk Woman could teach this small Nika-Sabe woman many things. Teach her the healing chants, teach her how to seek the gifts of the animals, but last night when the woman first asked her help in learning the plants, Hawk Woman knew at once she would reject all that was in the sacred hawk bundle. Reject it, and reject all the ways that mattered most. This woman would recoil from the animal wisdom, would loathe the white man’s scalp contained within.

  She had seen the look on the Nika-Sabe’s face when she noticed the red line on Hawk Woman’s scalp. Hawk Woman freshened it each morning. It marked the path for Grandfather Sun to follow.

  She extended her hands toward the fire and studied the spider tattoos—a mark of great prestige. Her father had sacrificed many horses and robes that she might have these sacred spiders. She in turn had honored her family by only uttering the permitted ceremonial cry when she was overcome by pain.

  By her side, wrapped on a spool, was her ever-present burden strap. Her husband had made it and presented it to her in a sacred ceremony years ago. A burden strap made and sanctified in this manner was as important to her people as the Sacred Hawk shrine was to the men. When her people saw it, they knew she was a traditional woman who prized virtue.

  What did this Nika-Sabe woman know of virtue and ceremonies? But, for that matter, what did the Osage know of ceremonies by now? While they were carrying Walking Buffalo into the dugout, Hawk Woman had noticed the clamor, the shouting, the disagreements, the posturing of these Nika-Sabe people. There were too many egos and no leader and no way of agreeing. Chaos again.

  One woman had been standing in front of a place that was fancier than the others. Three children were at her side. A white-faced woman. A woman of two worlds. She had turned away when she saw Hawk Woman watching her, tracking the naked envy on her face as she stared at the Nika-Sabe medicine woman.

  Watchers watching watchers.

  Once when Hawk Woman was in a mission store, she had seen a white cup on a shelf with the profile of a black person. It seemed to her a curiously frozen, fearful pose. Now, she remembered the cup.

  For all her yearning to understand the medicine in the plants, this sleeping Nika-Sabe woman was full of fear. Fear surrounded her. Hawk Woman could see it stalking her like a great gray wolf. This Nika-Sabe ran out charging like a small dog full of false courage, then fear sent her scurrying back to safety.

  Hawk Woman did not have the words for something she knew in her bones; this Nika-Sabe woman was on the wrong path. Her fear came from taking the wrong road. Given a few more days among these burrowed people, she might be able to pinpoint the source of the danger.

  Hawk Woman’s face softened before she drifted off to sleep again. Despite her fear, this Nika-Sabe woman had helped Walking Buffalo. During the night, she had given him the very last drop of the precious medicine from her bottle. Hawk Woman knew its power from the time she had spent in the mission infirmary. It was highly prized. It could not be replaced. She felt indebted.

  The next morning, the band of Osage prepared to return to the reservation. They gave the settlers more meat in exchange for the lodging and hay for the horses.

  To Bethany’s great relief, the Indian man’s wound was less angry. He ate everything she gave him.

  She helped transfer the warrior onto the travois again and watched as the old woman gathered her medicine bundle and the other bundle she had never unwrapped.

  The snow sparkled under the dazzling sun. Everyone clustered outside to say goodbye. Bethany clutched the blanket draped over her head and shoulders and blinked back tears. The one person who could help her was leaving, and she would probably never see her again. She turned away and pressed her fist against her nose, trying to regain control.

  As she did, she saw Dolly Redgrave cross over to one of the travois and reach toward a bundle as though she were helping adjust it. Dolly quickly removed a spool and hid it in the folds of her skirt.

  Too stunned to react, Bethany let the moment pass and turned back to the caravan. Clearly, the old woman had seen, too. Although her face was still, her black eyes glittered with rage, and they did not blink as she stared at Dolly. Bethany’s hands trembled as Dolly’s eyes widened, and she returned the old woman’s look with a sly, defiant smile.

  Daring her, daring her.

  Bethany swallowed. Despite last night’s camaraderie, these people were warriors. Used to killing.

  Hawk Woman seethed, and her heart pounded in her frail frame. The woman of two worlds had just taken another woman’s sacred burden strap. A word, all it would take was a word from her. Just a word shouted to Arrow-Going-Home, and these accursed Nika-Sabe would be no more.

  But then the Heavy Eyebrows would retaliate, and then there would be even more killing. Her people had begged to make this hunt. Begged to be allowed to leave the reservation. She would not risk the fragile bargain to hunt even over a sacred burden strap. They had promised the Heavy Eyebrows this would be a peaceful excursion.

  There were other ways. She knew them all. The woman of two worlds would soon understand her mistake.

  Sun-On-His-Wings shouted for them to leave. Hawk Woman checked the lines lashing Walking Buffalo to the travois, then looked stiffly ahead. At first, she did not look at the small Nika-Sabe medicine woman when she ran over to the travois and stood there, helplessly clutching at her blanket. Trembling with worry.

  Bethany’s voice quivered through her chattering teeth. Her steamy breath hovered in the morning air. “Ma’am. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry we can’t talk. Thank you for trying to teach me. I’m so sorry for what happened just now. I know you saw. I did, too.” Her tongue thickened with misery. “I wish you could understand me.”

  Hawk Woman did understand. She had been educated in a cruel mission school where the Heavy Eyebrows tried to exorcise the ways of the Osage from their very bones. She understood only too well the words and the intentions of these invaders no matter what their color.

  But for many reasons, it was important that she as a keeper of the sacred not be perceived as offering more than token help to this group. A little meat, a few robes exchanged for hay, that was fine. But teaching this woman to heal would expose ancient rituals outsiders did not have the right to know.

  “Thank you,” the Nika-Sabe said again.

  Then Hawk Woman softened, remembering the medicine sacrificed to the last drop simply to help Walking Buffalo bear the pain. This wee woman had trouble enough living in the same village with the woman of two worlds.

  She turned then, pointed toward the wounded warrior, and chose a word that would be meaningless to her own people. No one would remember her saying it. “Bartholomew.”

  “What? What did you say?” Bethany called after her as the long line of Indians started off through the snow.

  “Bartholomew,” Hawk Woman shouted back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A gaunt Negro woman in Saint Louis, Missouri, read a flyer from Nicodemus, Kansas.

  She walked.

  She walked out of the white folks’ house where she had been washing clothes. She left work pants a-soaking and delicates still submerged in the rinse water. She walked back to the hovel she shared with the pitiful colo
red family she had seen through a short, miserable round of influenza. She wrapped her collection of medicines and cures and her precious needle into a white, raggedy old apron and tied it to a pole. She did not add any food because she had none.

  She didn’t have a change of clothes. When she washed her raggedy dress, she did it in her old shift at night when the dark would hide her disgrace. Then she put the old dress on wet and removed the shift and washed it. She was not a natural born thief, or she could have done better.

  She walked through the town and across the levee leading to a packet boat bound for Wyandotte. She walked right up the gangplank just as though she had every right to do so. She stationed herself about three paces behind two white women. The crew assumed she was part of their entourage.

  Even if this had not been so, only the most courageous would have dreamed of crossing her. Her face was fierce and dangerous. She had queenly posture and angry, black eyes.

  She understood subterfuge and stayed slightly behind the white women. They, in turn, could barely see black people under ordinary circumstances, so in the chaos of the departure, they certainly did not notice her trailing after them. The crew fed her just like all the other people of color accompanying white people.

  She disembarked at Wyandotte—the chaotic, booming settlement on the Kansas side of the Missouri River—and made her way to the colored section of the town. Her speech was markedly Southern, but accurate, and she did not have any trouble getting answers to her main question—which was how to get west.

  She walked.

  She washed for a family in Lecompton long enough to trade her work for a length of linsey-woolsey and two yards of cotton. She made the linsey-woolsey into a warm dress, and, from the cotton, she immediately fashioned a new turban and underwear and a new shift. Then she started again on her long walk.