Crows & Cards

by Joseph Helgerson

  So there the chief and princess were, stranded in a strange land and penniless. And they hadn't even hit rock bottom yet, nowhere near it, 'cause right about then it started snowing heavier and heavier behind the chief's eyes. In a matter of days he went totally blind.

  But just before his vision was completely gone, a ray of sunshine struck. Buffalo Hilly happened upon them with a camel, which was the last thing the chief ever saw. And then came another miracle. The instant his eyesight was completely whited out, the crow spirit in his pouch started telling him what it saw. When Buffalo Hilly said he'd been invited to visit the king of Prussia, the chief and princess tagged along, knowing the camel would sooner or later lead them home, exactly the way Two Humps had foreseen.

  Just hearing of such tribulations brought a lump to my throat, and not some little speck of a one either. I didn't even bother asking how the chief planned on getting a page from Ma's dictionary to his dead father. No doubt he'd find a way. All I knew was that they really were going to help me get home. The relief I felt could have filled an ocean.

  When the princess and the chief waded out into the damp meadow, I followed along without any back talk, except to say, "The river's the other way."

  "So's Chilly," the princess answered.

  Seeing her point, I shut myself right up, figuring that every road headed home if you took the right turns. And besides, how lost could I get traveling with Indians? They'd been back and forth over this land a lot longer than me and mine.

  ***

  We crossed the meadow with the princess up front leading the pony and travois, which the chief was stretched out atop with all his worldly possessions. I brought up the rear, feeling so lightheaded that I halfway convinced myself that if I ever did get home, I'd just tell Ma and Pa it'd been a busy few weeks and leave it at that.

  But I was only lightheaded, not completely headless, so we hadn't gone too awful far before it dawned on me that such talk wasn't going to wash. My folks would have a whole lot more questions than I had answers.

  Not long after I struck that notion, I started lagging farther and farther in back of the pony. Oh, the chief and princess might walk me home across that hundred and sixty miles of wilderness, all right, but what could they do to change my ma's and pa's minds about apprenticing me out? The chief, with the help of that crow, might be able to see through mountains, but could he move 'em?

  Maybe a letter home was the thing to do after all. That way I could let them know the earth hadn't opened up and swallowed me whole, and that even though I hadn't exactly hooked up with Great-Uncle Seth, I was doing just fine and ... Slower and slower I dragged across that wet meadow, fretting every bit of the way about what I could pack into such a letter, until finally I was creeping along worse than Methuselah toward the end of his years. The chief and princess even had to pull up to wait for me.

  "Is that the fastest you can walk?" the princess wanted to know.

  "Some days."

  "My father says you'll be an old man before you get home."

  "You know," I said, coming to a stop, "I've been thinking about that. Maybe home isn't where I ought to be heading." Something desperate swooped over me then, and I think that I heard a trumpet blowing off in the far-gone distance as I spied the shadow of a possible answer to my woes. Even from the first I knew it was a slim chance, but when it comes to fools, I guess one size fits all. "There any way I could hook up with you?" I blurted. "Maybe learn about visions and such?"

  "What makes you think you could handle visions?" the princess scoffed.

  "Got my middle name from an uncle who's a wilderness preacher," I told her, hopeful-like. "Maybe such doings run in the family?"

  She wrinkled her nose some at that but passed it on to the chief, who gave back an answer I wasn't anywhere near expecting.

  "Let's make camp," the princess translated for him.

  And that's what we did. In the middle of that soaked meadow the princess somehow or other got a fire started and put a stew on to cook. When the princess and chief finally got around to putting their heads together, the princess got her back up and her cheeks went all starchy, for she and her father were disagreeing up a storm. In the end, the chief won out and the princess lifted her chin formal-like to remark, "My father wants to know if his pouch talked to you."

  She made it sound as though I was far too lowly for such a thing to ever happen.

  "Some," I answered back, taking exception to being lumped together with grubs and worms. "But it would have been helpful if I could have understood it."

  The princess acted as if what I'd said only proved her right and passed it on to her father with a flourish. Her high tone put the chief on the warpath. After a flurry of words that sounded all stones and sparks, he had her ask what was wrong with how the pouch had talked to me.

  "For one thing," I said, "I don't know Indian, and it wasn't bothering with any English."

  The princess had no more than passed all that on than the chief seized up as if he had a fish bone stuck in his craw. When the princess tried patting him on the back, he waved her off. He wasn't choking, just laughing. When he explained the joke to his daughter, her face went crab-apple sour and her voice fell flat. Seems that it had been the crow who ordered the chief to hand the pouch over to me. That had gone against the chief's better judgment, but the spirit had declared that I was the one in danger and if they ever hoped to get that picture of the two-humped horse, they had to get me some help. Except that the crow hadn't foreseen that I couldn't understand a word of Indian. This from the same spirit who'd helped guide them home all the way from Europe? That struck the chief as about the rip-roaringest thing he'd ever heard.

  The crow must not have been so amused though, for all of a sudden the chief sobered up as if he'd gotten new marching orders. Right away he spewed some words at the princess, who asked me, "Are you willing to learn our language?"

  The resentful way she laid that out, I could tell this wasn't any time for funning. So I squeezed on it some and come to see that maybe here's where I'd been heading all along without even knowing. It appeared I had something of a gift for talking with crows. How else could I explain being able to hear the one in the chief's pouch? And if that was the case, where else was I going to get a chance to put such a talent to use, other than with the chief? What's more, Ma and Pa couldn't argue with it if I ever got around to writing them a letter, not if I worked in how I was planning to hook up with Uncle Clayton somewhere out West and learn what he had to teach me about preachering. So it looked as though the die was cast, and I was dreadful glad of it, what with all the bridges I'd left smoldering behind me.

  "I don't see why not," I told 'em.

  When the princess passed on my answer, the chief puffed on his pipe real strong. For two or three hours he went at it, conferring with the pouch now and again, but otherwise taking time off only to hack and cough. I asked the princess what her father was up to, but she shhhed me, saying the crow was having a look around. Finally the chief cupped a hand around his ear to hear the pouch, then spoke to the princess, who looked crushed but managed to say, "You're hired. On one condition."

  "What's that?"

  "You'll have to ask your parents for permission."

  "Now hold on just a gosh-darn minute.... "

  "The crow's seen you talking to them in a vision."

  "He has?" My toes ran cold.

  "You tell them the truth and everything is fine."

  "It is?"

  "He saw it," the princess insisted, though in an almost gentle kind of way.

  "Were they mad?"

  "Of course they were," she said, flaring up a bit only to simmer down and add, "but they get over it."

  Maybe that was what I'd been needing to hear all along, 'cause it settled me down considerably. I was even calmed enough to make a long speech to the chief and the pouch, telling them how thankful I was that they were willing to take a chance on me, though deep down I think what I was most grateful for was ha
ving someone willing to stand beside me when I had to face Pa and Ma. But the main thing was, I was headed home to set the record straight and that just felt right all over, no matter what the consequences.

  And then something no heavier than a shadow landed on my shoulder. Turning my head sideways, I found myself eye to eye with a glossy black crow who appeared to have something to say. Now all I had to do was learn how to listen.

  THE END

  * * *

  AFTERWORD

  IN 1849, if you were a twelve-year-old boy of European descent and if your parents believed in the importance of knowing how to make or fix quality things, then you might have ended up apprenticed to a master craftsman (most girls did not serve as apprentices). However, the practice of individual craftsmen training young boys was dying out. In another ten or fifteen years, by the end of the Civil War, apprenticeships would be almost entirely gone. Why? The biggest single reason was the Industrial Revolution and the changes that it brought about. Material goods were more and more likely to be turned out by a factory and less and less likely to be handcrafted. The spread of factories made it harder for craftsmen to make a living, and as a result, the number of craftsmen and apprentices dwindled.

  Another factor that contributed mightily to the downfall of apprenticeships was the rapid spread of Europeans across North America. New towns sprang up everywhere, and these towns had many available jobs. It became relatively easy for apprentices to run away. They could break the terms of their contracts with craftsmen and still be able to find employment in a new city that was in need of workers.

  The most famous example of such a runaway was one of the United States' Founding Fathers—Benjamin Franklin. Apprenticed as a printer to his own brother in Boston, Franklin broke the terms of his apprenticeship and ran off to Philadelphia, where he started his own print shop. Years later he went on to write about it in his autobiography, which was published after his death in 1790 and became a bestseller of its day, going through fifty-five reprints in the next thirty years. Certainly his story must have influenced other young apprentices to follow his lead and start their own adventures.

  It is safe to say that one occupation that didn't have a formal system of apprenticeship was that of the riverboat gambler. However, such gamblers would have certainly been willing to take advantage of a naive young boy setting forth on his own. They were willing to dupe almost anyone for their own personal gain. Cheating was their way of life, and the telegraph described in this story was only one of the ways they rigged games of chance. In the years leading up to the Civil War, gamblers thrived on steamboats and in river towns, living off the huge influx of people and money along the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. That was where the action was.

  ***

  If you had been a twelve-year-old Indian girl in 1849, you might have found yourself leading as nomadic an existence as the princess in this story. The Indian tribes at the center of the continent were suffering mightily as tens of thousands of European settlers arrived each year. The pressure to force Indian people westward had been mounting since the founding of the first European colonies. The basic reason behind this colonial expansion? Land for settlers. By 1849, European settlers in the United States outnumbered Native Americans by roughly thirty to one. But fifty years earlier, in 1800, the ratio had been only five to one. Fifty years before that, the ratio had been close to one to one. Go back another fifty years to 1700, and Native Americans outnumbered Europeans by perhaps five to one.

  In her own words, a young Indian girl named Zitkala-Sa of the Yankton Sioux tribe, which now lives in South Dakota, remembers the impact of Europeans on her life in the later 1800s:

  Late in the morning, my friend Judéwin gave me a terrible warning. Judéwin knew a few words of English, and she, had overheard the paleface, woman talk about cutting our long, heavy hair. Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!

  We discussed our fate some moments, and when Judéwin said, "We have to submit, because they are strong," I rebelled.

  "No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!" I answered.

  I watched my chance, and when no one noticed, I disappeared. I crept up the stairs as quietly as I could in my squeaking shoes—my moccasins had been exchanged for shoes.... I found a large room with three white beds in it.... On my hands and knees I crawled under the bed, and cuddled myself in the dark corner.... From my hiding place I peered out, shuddering with fear whenever I heard footsteps nearby.... What caused them to stoop and look under the bed I do not know. I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair.... I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit.

  This young girl had to change her name as well as her hairstyle and became known as Gertrude Bonnin. The quotation is taken from "The Cutting of My Long Hair," collected in American Indian Stories (published by Rio Grande Press in 1976) and reprinted in A Braid of Lives: Native American Childhood (see section on further reading).

  The princess and the chief's tribe was a neighbor of the Yankton Sioux. From the time of Zeb's story onward, all Indians west of the Mississippi were slowly being confined to reservations, making it harder for them to travel about and live off the land as their ancestors had. The princess would not have been raised on a reservation, but her children might have been and her grandchildren definitely would have been. Once forced onto reservations, Native Americans everywhere suffered the same traumatic loss of culture described above as Europeans tried to convert them to Christianity and the white man's ways.

  ***

  As for visions and dreams, they played a central part in the religion of Native Americans at the time of Zeb's story. The members of many tribes went on vision quests as young adults in hopes of finding a spirit who would protect and guide them. They prepared for this by fasting for several days. Often the vision they received was of an animal, on whom they were later able to call for the kind of help that an outsider might label as magic or a miracle. Certainly Chief Standing Tenbears benefited from the power of such a spirit.

  ***

  By 1849 the total population of the United States was twenty-three million, of which roughly three million were slaves of African descent. What was it like to be a slave? First, all were the property of another person. Just as people today can own a house or car or big-screen TV, people back then could own other people. What if you were someone else's property? The best you could hope for would be to have a humane master—one who treated you kindly—but many weren't that lucky. To get more work out of their slaves, some owners resorted to whippings and beatings.

  Slaves rebelled against such treatment in many different ways. Some resorted to armed uprisings, such as Nat Turner's slave revolt in 1831 in Virginia, which had to be put down by federal and state troops. Self-mutilation—harming oneself—was another form of rebellion, for this deprived the owner of work from the slave. A carpenter slave in Kentucky was reported to have cut off one of his hands as well as the fingers of his other hand to prevent himself from being sold down the river. Finally, running away from their masters was a common form of rebellion. Those who tried escaping slavery this way either joined groups of slaves hiding in wilderness areas or made for the Free States, where slavery was outlawed (basically, any state north of the Ohio River was a Free State). How badly did slaves want to be free? One woman in North Carolina ran away from her owner sixteen times, which of course meant that she was caught and punished just as often.

  ***

  St. Louis was the boomtown of the era. In the century before this story, it was ruled by three different countries—Spain, France, and the United States, who acquired it as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. By 1849 it truly
was the gateway to the West, a sprawling, rambunctious meeting place for a wide range of people and cultures. Roughly half of its 1849 population of seventy thousand people had been born in other countries, and of the half that were native-born Americans, a majority of them came from other states. Also included in St. Louis's population were 2,700 slaves and 1,300 free blacks. Native American tribes, such as the Osage and Illinois, had been pushed out of the area, but they remained regular visitors to the city, often camping on the banks of Chouteau's Pond.

  ***

  But not all movement was westward in America. There was also a tiny but newsworthy trickle of Indians who traveled eastward. Sometimes they went to the nation's capital to meet the president. Other times they traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.

  In the 1820s a group of twelve Osage Indians, including a man named Big Soldier, left St. Louis for Europe. They traveled widely, seeing France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. They attended operas, were mobbed by crowds of curiosity seekers, were taken advantage of by greedy promoters, and were wined and dined by King Charles X of France. The "Noble Savage," as North American Indians were sometimes romantically thought of by Europeans, excited the imaginations of royalty and commoners alike.

  Certainly the attitudes of Europeans toward Indians were contradictory. Europeans may have invaded and taken Indian lands, but sometimes they deeply admired the Indians' close ties to nature and their customs, which were viewed as exotic. It was documented that Indians traveling across Europe received gifts from their hosts and that these gifts became prized possessions upon their return home. Travelers to Missouri in the 1840s recorded that Big Soldier, one of the twelve Osage who had traveled across Europe twenty years before, proudly showed off a French bronze medal given to him on his trip. The medal bore a portrait of the French general Lafayette. Big Soldier spoke of the general with affection and treasured the medal above all his possessions.