by LeAnne Howe
The first day they meet. He is wearing a dark green shirt, the sleeves are rolled up and his Harvard tie is a bit askew. After his speech, she tries to pin him down. “If elected chief, how would you handle the tribe’s yearly budget shortfall?” she asks.
He doesn’t answer, but teases her in order to change the subject. “You know, I’ve been looking for woman like you all my life. Someone who will keep me on the straight and narrow path.” This will be a pattern he repeats until the day she stops loving him and loves his dying.
She hears her sisters and Gore planning the strategy for her trial, as if she never confessed. Why continue the agony?
“If we can prove McAlester was laundering money and paying off a number of political cronies,” he says, “we can offer alternative scenarios as to who else might have killed him. Since there were no powder burns on Auda’s hands, and no gloves found at the scene, that might be enough to get the murder charge against her dropped.”
“You will not do that,” says Auda, quietly. She wipes the sleeve of her robe across her face. Whatever crazy expression there is rubs off. “I am responsible for what I did to the Chief of the Choctaw Nation. You will tell the court I am guilty, or you will not represent me. Do you understand?”
Her lawyer stands up and walks outside. Within minutes he comes back in, and reaches his hand across the table to shake on it. To Auda, it’s a gesture as sacred as if they’d signed a treaty.
Just then, Hoppy walks briskly into the kitchen and kisses her gently on the cheek. “We’re with you,” he whispers, “and we’ve always been with you.”
She wonders about his cryptic comment, but then sees the emerald green streaks in his hair and dismisses it as youthful drama. “Thank you, dear.”
“Grandmother’s home,” he says, appealing to her heart. “She’s outside on the lawn greeting the Choctaws who’ve come to pray for her. We just got through reciting the Lord’s Prayer with a Choctaw preacher. He also read from the book of Psalms. He leads me by the still waters...yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. We repeated that last part four times, then a really old guy sang prayers for the Mother. I think the song was for Grandmother, but I didn’t understand all the words.”
Hoppy motions for her to get up. “C’mon outside, lots of friends are waiting. The old man is going to sing again.” Her nephew proudly chants, “Hatak okla hut okchaya bilia hoh-illi bila.” The people are ever living, ever dying, ever alive.
Tema smiles proudly at Hoppy. “It’s sort of a Choctaw double entendre, son. ‘Prayers for the Mother’ means Mother Earth.”
6 | Koi Chitto, The Bone Picker
GULF COAST
HASH KAF, DECEMBER 1738
At the fork of the two roads, at the edge of the Blue Waters, Koi Chitto turns north along a timber wall. Black-headed parrots roost in the trees above his head as he continues walking toward Big Trace. Finally, when he reaches the southernmost end of the ancient trade route, he stops at a large watering hole and blows up a fire with the small piece of coal he carries. He lifts his pipe to salute the four directions. He is grateful for traveling so long without difficulty.
Koi Chitto sits and smokes quietly. In the distance he hears an alligator stalk him, ripping the swamp’s underbrush as it approaches. It stops two yards in front of him and fixes its eyes on the fire.
Koi Chitto studies his guest. A young one, only five feet long, it must have a nest close by. He admires alligators. Like birds, they glide silently through black waters using river currents as drafts of wind. Perfect killers, alligators smother their victims in sand and water, saving them for rainy days—just as experienced hunters do. His people revere them so much they call one of their dances “Alligator Power.”
On dry land the alligator is a different being altogether. Living tree trunks nesting in beds of mud, they surprise no one, except maybe the Inkilish okla and Filanchi okla, who are terrified of them. He motions and tries to distract the adolescent beast from the fire’s light. It is useless. The fire has called it like a lover. Once hypnotized, an alligator will listen for hours to the crackling flames. What seductive stories fire must tell: the taste of burning wood, of palmetto leaves, the terror of rain. Fireflies carry those same stories, forming tiny constellations of stars in the arms of forests. Occasionally, a firefly overcome with emotion by the heat of its story will ignite and fall burning to the ground.
It’s the same with people, thinks Koi Chitto. Too much fire in the belly and you die.
The old warrior walks away from his campfire and stands facing the darkness. He will give the alligator one more chance. Koi Chitto looks down at his feet. Phosphorescent molds shine underfoot on the dank leaves and he reaches down to touch them. He’s been traveling alone for so long that he has become fascinated by minute things. The day after Shakbatina’s body was placed on the burial scaffold, he left Yanàbi Town and headed south for the Blue Waters. During his three months of solitary wandering, he’s visited many towns where distant cousins live.
He turns to look at his guest. Still captivated, it must obviously be a gift. He picks up his war club and walks toward it. It never moves or stirs, even when he bashes in its head. In his youth he killed and cleaned many alligators. It was good training for a warrior. The alligator has many purposes. The tikilbi, a stiff hide made from its skin, can be tied across a warrior’s body as a shield against arrows and spears. The meat of the tail is a delicacy. He gives thanks to the animal’s spirit before he lops its tail off and roasts the flesh.
As he sits watching the meat sizzle someone pokes him in the back. He whirls around. An old woman with a wizened bronze face stands before him. With her spiny fingers she gestures obscenely at him. He realizes she must be an animal spirit, and smiles sheepishly. He takes a small deerskin pouch filled with tobacco and passes it to her.
She accepts it and spits. “Old man, what are you doing?”
“Cooking.”
“Ai, ai, ai! It’s bone-picking time,” she says, bobbing her head up and down like a porcupine. She opens her mouth wide, revealing cotton-white gums. Koi Chitto understands what she wants and blows smoke in her mouth. She fans the rest around her body. “Ai, ai, ai, you better get going to Yanàbi Town. Trouble is coming.”
Koi Chitto agrees, and offers her a second pinch of tobacco and she snatches it. He takes the alligator meat off the fire and presents it to her. She refuses. “The alligator is for you—he must give you the strength to finish what you start. Use the river like an alligator and go fast, it’s bonepicking time.” Then the cranky animal spirit gives him a mean belly rub with needle-sharp fingers.
“Huh, stop that,” snaps Koi Chitto.
“Go now,” says the animal spirit.
Koi Chitto argues with the porcupine spirit. “It is not time for her ceremony. Only three moons have passed since my wife’s death, three more must pass.”
“Aaaaaaghh! You are wasting time. Get going!” she bullies. Smoke tendrils spun themselves around her and she goes up in fumes.
Koi Chitto is not shaken by her exit. Porcupine spirits are the nervous types, prone to fits. He picks up his tobacco pouch and pulls a ragged deer hide around his shoulders, but sleeps fitfully. Memories churn his dreams into nightmares. He sees Anoleta running toward her mother’s cabin. When she pushes open the door she falls into the river. Her breath floats above the murky water like smoke. He runs to save her, but a feathered serpent stands up suddenly out of the water, bites him in the face, then flaps toward the sun. Koi Chitto puts his hand to his forehead. A drop or two of his blood hits the ground then swells into a river that whispers, Anoleta is dead.
Koi Chitto opens his eyes, the hot sun is already up. Exhausted, he drags himself to the river for a swim. Women from a nearby village are washing themselves. When they pass him sitting naked in the sun with angry red marks across his stomach, they point and gossip loudly. Silly women, he thinks. He will ignore them. He is a powerful warrior from the Im
oklasha, war clan. He does not have time to explain things to women. But today, he will go north as fast as he can and heed Big Mother Porcupine’s warning. Something is very wrong. He must reach Yanàbi Town, his daughters are in danger.
For three more days he tramps through the swamps until arriving at the village of his cousins, the Houmas. They believe they are part of the original people, descendants of the crawfish who had crawled up from the cave at Nanih Waiya to live in the sun. Their cabins reflect their beliefs. They are dome-shaped huts, fifteen feet high and supported from ground to roof by giant green cane poles. The Houmas adorn them with large round plates made of copper that signal to Hashtali.
An old woman who’d known Koi Chitto’s father offers him sanctuary. When he tells her where he is going and why, she gives him a canoe. She says the Houmas are preparing for war. “We cannot stop what is coming,” she says, sadly. “Many of our cousins have already moved west. They say they are going to visit their friends, the Caddos. Who knows if they’ll return?”
Koi Chitto doesn’t know what to say. He’s a Choctaw warrior from Chickasawhay Town, the heart of a great and powerful nation. His town will never leave, nor avoid a fight. Finally the old woman offers her grandson to him. “Take my Grandson as your traveling companion. Trade my mulberry cloth to the Inkilish okla and Filanchi okla. Its whiteness has been made by our beloved Sun; if they wear it they will become hungry for peace. If they refuse, be sure that you trade for muskets and gun powder.”
On his last night at the Houma village, Koi Chitto climbs into an enormous hammock that is laced between two trees. He stretches out on top of the white cloth as if he is floating on water. The white star road is bright in the heavens. He traces its path, and at the end of it is Shakbatina, like a firefly winging toward him. Everything carries him to her. Memories, their daughters, the aroma of sweet corn and wild plums. Tonight he wants to dream in complete wetness and feel her long damp hair tether his naked body to her.
Fragments of Shakbatina cling to him.
“Here, take this,” she says, packing food for him to take on his journey to Chickasawhay Town for a council meeting. “For luck.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an alligator made from the pulp of mayhaw.”
“Looks like a stick with four stick legs.”
“Yes, bony like you. I see the resemblance now. That must be why I traded for it.”
When they first met, Shakbatina was cultivating special healing plants and mining salt. She was trading them up and down the river for all sorts of things—calumets adorned with plumage of every color, red stones full of tobacco, and figures of dried fruit pulp in the shapes of men, deer, and alligators.
He was young and full of energy. He was already hunting for another Choctaw woman and her children who lived in Yashoo Town, and had once bragged that he was destined to make children in every town in the nation. But Shakbatina had other plans. In order to marry her he had to promise to hunt for only two families. “An Imoklasha can only provide so much if you are to meet your obligations protecting the Choctaw borderlands,” she had said. He had agreed out of lust, but later realized the sense of it.
Koi Chitto raises his hands to touch Shakbatina, but grasps only air. He begins talking to the stars. If he doesn’t reach home soon he will go mad.
At dawn he tastes something sweet. He opens his eyes. A small child has climbed into his hammock and put the flesh of a dried peach into his mouth. She chews another bite and pushes it between his lips. He smiles. Girl children are taught from infancy to be healers. He feigns sickness and begs for more. She giggles. It is a child’s game. Soon the old woman’s grandson appears. He explains that he is ready to go with Koi Chitto so he can trade with the Choctaws at Yanàbi Town. He picks up the little girl and takes her to a cabin not far away. When he returns they depart with enough supplies to last them a week.
Three days later Koi Chitto can smell Pearl River long before he sees it. Its rich liquid hangs in the air. The rustle of trees lining the banks make him hunger for home and he paddles faster. He and his companion make fifteen miles before they find nine moored canoes. They see no one, but the tracks are fresh. Koi Chitto and the Houma wait an hour, hearing nothing before they paddle another league. Soon they spot two women fishing on the bank. The women flee immediately, leaving behind a large basket containing a catfish, a man’s foot, and a child’s hand, all smoke dried.
Koi Chitto steals the fish and throws the rest in the water. Cannibals, the Attakapas. He hates them. If the Attakapas dare to encroach on Chickasawhay they’ll be fed to the dogs. Minutes later, the two women reappear, with four men running along the shoreline after them. Koi Chitto is so enraged he stands up out of the canoe, and shows his penis to the cannibals onshore. “Eat this!” he shouts.
Stubby arrows barely miss the Houma, so Koi Chitto tries to make himself a bigger target. “Here, here, here,” he screams, belligerently pointing at his chest. “Fetus eaters! You can’t hit an Imoklasha warrior.” He gives a loud war whoop as they paddle away.
In the distance, he and the Houma hear the violent screams of wild horses. The animals are running back and forth along the river bank. The two men hide their canoe and creep onshore to see what is wrong. Koi Chitto soon understands what the horses are running from. Burning carcasses smolder along the path to the village. A big splayfooted fleasore dog hangs on a post thrusting a black tongue that won’t retract. Koi Chitto thinks he sees a huge skeletal bird draped over a branch. Its dried wings flap wearily in the wind. He crouches low beneath the tree to inspect the thing. It isn’t a bird, but a loosely-skinned human, badly charred.
All the canoes of the village are broken. Cut with very good axes. Inkilish okla axes. “They will not be satisfied until we’re all dead,” says the Houma, sadly.
“The Inkilish okla trade with anyone,” replies Koi Chitto. “Even cannibals.”
The two men paddle all night, wanting to get as far from the carnage as possible. The next day they carry their canoe and supplies over an embankment, only to find water that does not communicate with the river. It has long ago been damned up by beavers and is too brackish to drink. The Houma says he has made a wrong turn and they labor to retrace their path, carting the canoe with all their supplies back the way they came. The next day they cross over another embankment and find the river that will carry them closest to home.
Five more days pass until they reach the outskirts of Yanàbi Town. Koi Chitto and the Houma are greeted by runners who are returning from the surrounding towns of Kunshak, Abeka, Chickasawhay, Yowani, and Concha, all allied towns among the Choctaws. The runners tell Koi Chitto that they are gathering the people together for a bone-picking ceremony. As he walks into the village, Koi Chitto spots Nitakechi sitting in front of a cabin. At his feet is a basket of meat.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” laughs Nitakechi. “I smelled your stench last night.”
The two men greet each other with belly rubs and more insults.
“Miko Chitto and Alibamon Miko arrive today with many other representatives from their towns,” Nitakechi says. “The horsefly is on his way here. Every day Red Shoes’ mouth grows bigger. A truer Osano I’ve never known.”
“It is time we make sure that he never hungers again,” says Koi Chitto in voice that comes out of his gut. “In one of the towns I visited, I was told that Red Shoes said he would consider anyone his enemies who attacked the Chickasaws. He specifically mentioned the Red Fox village. I think he wants a war.”
“That was before the Inkilish okla stopped trading with him,” laughs Nitakechi. “Do not trouble yourself about the horsefly. I’ve heard that the Intek Aliha are cooking a special meal for him. That should cure his hunger pains. You should know that many men from the Filanchi okla are coming for the bone-picking ceremony, including Bienville and his Blackrobes. They will arrive tomorrow. Perhaps they will see Red Shoes before he is finished by the women.”
The two men sit in silence. T
hey pass the basket of meat back and forth between them. Nitakechi speaks carefully. “The eastern towns of the Choctaws are stirred up against the Chickasaws and their Inkilish okla supporters. Some of the warriors have brought Chickasaw scalps to sell to men of the Filanchi okla.” He blushes and clears his throat. “Even some Inholahta men are speaking for war.”
Koi Chitto understands. When a leader of a peace clan no longer argues against bloodshed, it means more than all the cries of warriors. He mulls this over before telling his story.
“I was told it was time to release Shakbatina’s bones from her burial scaffold, but six moons have not passed. One more thing—in my dream,” says Koi Chitto, “the river told me that Anoleta was dead. The signs of a coming disaster are everywhere.”
Nitakechi listens carefully as Koi Chitto tells what he has seen. The description of the burning village and the cannibals who are on the move. Anoleta’s strange death.
“I will tell the men in council what you have said,” says Nitakechi. “Shakbatina has been coming into my dreams. She wants you to pick her bones, I am sure of her meaning now. You are a warrior, and her husband. Remember what she did on the day of her death, she sent a dual message. She painted her face for war, but dressed in white for peace, a very peculiar thing for an Inholahta woman to do.”
“But a husband must not pick the bones of his wife,” says Koi Chitto. “It’s not right, even though I am from a different clan, this is not right. I fear the imbalance this will cause for our children’s children.”
Nitakechi agrees that this is very unusual, but he insists that Shakbatina must be released early, and that Koi Chitto must do it. “There is something else that relates to all this,” he adds. “The war chief, Choucououlacta, has sworn to protect Anoleta, and her sisters, with his life. Anoleta has agreed to marry him. With Choucououlacta comes the support of ten more towns to be united with Yanàbi Town. That makes eleven. It should not be too much longer now.”