But she needed this one.
“Born-great!” she shouted, but even as the name left her mouth she knew it was not his doing. Her rage and grief could only flail at nothing. There was no one to blame for it all, no enemy to fight against.
“I am sorry, Wolfstar,” she sobbed. “But—this robe is all I have left.” She pulled the robe up to her face and buried her tears in the thick, greasy-smelling hair. “It is all I have left.”
Suddenly she thought of the necklace … The burnished ivory claws around Wolfstar’s throat gleamed enticingly. She could leave him the hide and take the necklace. Surely he would want her to have it. She struggled with herself, watching the blond fur she had cut so precisely to fit between each claw flatten in the harsh wind.
No one would know.
Shame billowed through her. This boy, this boy who was a man, had laid down his life for her!
With great effort she lifted the big, reddish-gold pelt over Wolfstar’s body, over the necklace, and tucked it around him.
She caressed the fur one last time. Then she covered it with stones until it disappeared.
She stood over the grave and cut her arms and legs with a piece of flint, and felt the pain, and it was good to be able to feel. As the blood flowed out of her body, so did the tears. To her shame she was mourning the grizzly robe as well. But she could not help herself.
She was so filled with the other kind of pain she did not think it could ever be washed out of her. “You are gone,” she cried, “do not turn back. We wish to fare well.”
She stepped to the edge of the bluff and stood a long time, staring out over the prairie below. She felt very small inside.
What did she have to live for now? Everything was gone. She thought of how she had struggled for a place in the world for so long. All she had ever lived for now seemed foolish and far in the past. There was no glory in killing. No glory in glory. Nothing.
She looked down. The bluff was steep as a cliff here, and very high. With one step it would be over.
* * *
But Wolfstar had died to save her. If she ended her life, his death, his betrayal of his father, his betrayal of his entire nation—all of these would have been in vain.
Again shame washed through her. What was her suffering—the suffering of one person—in the face of all that had been lost that she might live? She thought not only of what Wolfstar had given, but also of her brother’s death. Suddenly she realized the horror of his being trampled by horses, of his life lost so young. This was his fate, to fulfill her path as the Great One. And before him, her mother had died giving them life. She thought of all her father had suffered for her to be the Great One. She thought of the mysterious gift giver from her childhood, and she knew somehow that there had been many—many wise enough to know that she could not have accepted their gifts by light of day.
Wolfstar had been right: her life was not really her own. It belonged to her family, her people … and to Wolfstar, and his family and his people—perhaps to all people, perhaps to the universe. She had no right to take her life. No, somehow, somehow, she must try to make her life worth all that had been given for it.
But what in her could possibly be worth such a price? The idea that she was worth saving, worth dying for, seeped into her and filled her with tears. She began to look upon herself with a strange reverence, as a priest looks upon a sacred bundle—something to be treated and wielded with utmost care.
That she was the Great One seemed to mean something different now: a life not of glory, but of duty. A life of struggling to be worthy of the honor.
She began to tremble with the enormity of her task.
She did not know how she would do it, but this new sense of purpose filled her as nothing had ever filled her before. Perhaps Broken Branch could guide her. He seemed to know there was something valuable in her. She would go back to their valley, to his lodge, and when he came to the doorway, she would tell him, “I am ready.”
This time, it would be true.
She looked at Wolfstar’s grave for a long time, touching the arrowhead dancing from her ear in the wind. It comforted and strengthened her.
“Your death will not be in vain, Wolfstar,” she vowed. “None of it will be in vain.”
As she turned away she felt light. Full of light. There was a fire in her, people had said; now it was no longer the raging, insatiable blaze of a bad heart, but a steady, rare, red-gold flame.
And suddenly she knew her name.
Somewhat lightened of her burdens, Grizzlyfire descended the great bluff, mounted her horse, and turned toward home.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The territory that Grizzlyfire traveled through in this book is now part of Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska. The great bluff, now Scotts Bluff National Monument in Nebraska, was used in the 1840s and 1850s as a landmark by settlers traveling westward on the Oregon Trail. In 1872, the “Land of Boiling Waters” became the world’s first national park: Yellowstone. The obsidian cliff still stands in the park, and is protected by law. However, obsidian—a natural volcanic glass—is quarried from other deposits around the world. Obsidian was prized by Indians throughout North America for its amazing sharpness, and has been used in modern times for some surgical blades, as it can achieve a sharper edge than steel.
Grizzlyfire’s people, the Apsaalooka (named after a bird that is long extinct), are better known by the English mistranslation of their name, the “Crow.” Many Crow people still live in their historical homeland of southern Montana, on a reservation. Although it was rare for Crow girls to become warriors, it was not forbidden. One female warrior even earned the name Woman Chief. And while it was not a requirement for chiefhood, stopping to rescue a fallen comrade was perhaps the most heroic deed a Crow warrior could perform.
Because the Plains Indians consisted of many different peoples, or tribes, with different languages, they used a widely understood sign language to communicate between tribes. It was also used among people who spoke the same language, when silence was desirable. This language is separate and distinct from the sign language commonly used today by the hearing-impaired.
Different tribes also practiced different religions, although some tribes shared certain general spiritual beliefs, such as a reverence for the number four and a belief in multiple souls. For almost all Plains peoples, medicine men and women (people, sometimes called shamans, who had some special relationship to the spirit world and often performed medical services) and priests (holy people trained in religious rituals) were important to spiritual life.
At the time of this story (the mid-eighteenth century), the Skidi, or “Wolf,” band of Pawnee had been performing the Morning Star sacrifice for so many years that no one knows when it began, and the details of why it was performed are no longer clear. Some anthropologists think it may have been adopted between 1506 and 1519 from the Aztec of Central America, who practiced a similar ritual. In 1817, Pitaresaru, the son of a Pawnee chief, rescued a girl from the altar as she was about to be killed. Although the Pawnee had always believed the sacrifice to be a religious necessity, and vital to their survival, they were so deeply affected by this rescue that they ceased the practice. Some Pawnee disagreed with this decision, and two or three sacrifices were rumored to have been performed by the dissenters over the next few years, but the ceremony then died out.
At the time the Morning Star ceremony was abandoned, approximately twelve thousand Pawnee were living in the central Nebraska area in the manner of their ancestors, relatively unaffected by European expansion. According to the 1910 U.S. Census, however, only 610 Pawnee remained. Today the Pawnee people survive, but their traditional way of life, like that of most Native Americans, has been lost forever.
* * *
Thanks are due to many people and institutions who helped in the development of this book. For assisting my research, thanks to Yellowstone National Park naturalists David La-Conte, Roy Renkin, and Paul Schullery; Crow Agency Bilingual Materials Develop
ment Center director Marlene Walking Bear; and instructor Sharon Stewart-Peregoy and archivist Magdalene Moccasin from Little Bighorn College. For access to their collections, thanks to the libraries at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley, the Nebraska State Historical Society, and the New York Public Library. Of course, any errors that the book may contain are solely mine.
For her critique of an early draft, thanks to editor Maureen Sullivan. For encouragement that has never been forgotten, I am grateful to my teachers, especially Viola Diegel, Esther Hiller, Patricia Fingleton, Margaret Rothstein, and Marianne Zubryckyj. For incisive editing, commitment to the project, and sheer stamina, thanks to my editor, Wesley Adams. For moral support and clearheaded perspective throughout the process, thanks to Stephen Fletcher. For a summer of happy plot discussions in the office on Main Street, thanks to my brother Dale. For everything, Emmanuel Schreiber. For financial support that made this book possible, as well as for invaluable encouragement, thanks to my father. And finally, I am thankful to my mother, for prodding me all my life to follow my dream, and for the little glass bear whose task it is to spur me on in her absence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Matcheck lives in Palo Alto, California. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by Diane Matcheck
All rights reserved
First edition, 1998
Sunburst edition, 2005
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eISBN 9781466895706
First eBook edition: February 2016
The Sacrifice Page 14