The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  Governor Reynolds was furious. His shame over what had happened to his militia was shared by the populace of every border state. The depredations of the Winnebago were magnified and blamed on Black Hawk. Fresh volunteers poured in, drawn by a rumor that a bounty set by the Illinois legislature in 1814 was still in force—fifty dollars to be paid for every male Indian killed or every squaw or red-skinned child captured. Reynolds had no trouble swearing in three thousand more men. Two thousand nervous soldiers already were camped in forts along the Mississippi, under the command of General Henry Atkinson, Colonel Zachary Taylor second in command. Two companies of infantry were moved into Illinois from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and an army of one thousand regular soldiers was transferred from eastern posts under the command of General Winfield Scott. These troops were afflicted with cholera while steamboats carried them across the Great Lakes, but even without them, an enormous force, hungry for racial revenge and restored honor, had been set into motion.

  For the girl Two Skies the world became small. Always it had seemed enormous during the leisurely journey between the Sauks’ winter camp in Missouri and their summer village on the Rocky River. But now wherever her people turned there were white scouts and there was firing and screaming before they could break away. They took a few scalps and lost a few braves. They were fortunate not to encounter a main body of white-skinned troops. Black Hawk feinted and twisted in his tracks, laying false trails in an attempt to elude the soldiers, but most of his followers were women and children, and it was hard to conceal the movements of so many.

  They quickly became fewer. Old people died, and some children. Two Skies’ infant brother grew small-faced and large-eyed. Their mother’s milk didn’t dry up, but the flow slackened and turned thin, so there was never enough to satisfy the child. Two Skies carried her brother most of the time.

  Very soon, Black Hawk stopped speaking about driving away the whiteskins. Now he talked of escaping into the far north from which the Sauks had come hundreds of years before. But as the moons passed, many of his followers didn’t have enough faith to stay with him. Lodge by lodge left the Sauk party, slipping off by themselves. Small groups probably wouldn’t survive, but most had made up their minds that the manitous weren’t with Black Hawk.

  Green Buffalo remained faithful, despite the fact that four moons after they had left Keokuk’s Sauks, Black Hawk’s party had dwindled to a few hundred people trying to keep alive by eating roots and tree bark. They returned to Masesibowi, as always taking comfort from the great river. The steamboat Warrior came upon most of the Sauks in the shallows at the mouth of the Ouisconsin River, trying to catch fish. As the boat moved toward them, Black Hawk saw the six-pound gun on the bow and knew they could fight no longer. His men waved a white flag, but the boat drew near and a Winnebago mercenary on the deck shouted in their language, “Run and hide, the whites are going to shoot!”

  They had started to splash shoreward, screaming, when the cannon let go canister point-blank, followed by a heavy fire of musketry. Twenty-three Sauks were killed. The others made it into the woods, some of them dragging or carrying the wounded.

  That night they talked among themselves. Black Hawk and the Prophet decided to go to the country of the Chippewa to see if they could live there. Three lodges of people said they would go with them, but the others, including Green Buffalo, had no faith that the Chippewa would give the Sauks cornfields when other tribes wouldn’t, and they determined to rejoin Keokuk’s Sauks. In the morning they said good-bye to the few who were going to the Chippewa, and they started south, toward home.

  The steamboat Warrior tracked the Indians by following the flocks of carrion crows and vultures downstream. Wherever the Sauks went now, the dead were simply abandoned. Some were old people and children, some were those wounded in the previous attack. When the boat stopped to examine bodies, always the ears and the scalps were taken. It didn’t matter if the patch of dark hair came from a child or the red ear was a woman’s; they would be proudly carried back to small towns as evidence that their owners were Indian fighters.

  Those Sauks still alive left Masesibowi and moved inland, only to meet the army’s Winnebago hirelings. Behind the Winnebago, lines of soldiers fixed the bayonets that led the Indians to call them Long Knives. As the whites charged, a hoarse animal cry rose from them, deeper than a war whoop but just as savage. They were so many, so intent on killing in order to regain something they believed they had lost. The Sauks could do nothing but fall back, firing. When they reached Masesibowi again they tried to fight but were quickly driven into the river. Two Skies was standing next to her mother in waist-deep water when a lead ball tore through Union-of-Rivers’ lower jaw. She dropped into the water facedown. Two Skies had to turn her mother onto her back while holding the infant He-Who-Owns-Land. She managed to do so only with the greatest difficulty; then she understood that Union-of-Rivers was dead. She couldn’t see her father or her sister. The world was gunfire and screams, and when the Sauks waded through the water to a little willow island, she went with them.

  They tried to make a stand on the island, huddling behind rocks and fallen logs. But on the river, moving out of the mist like a great ghost, the steamboat soon had the small island under crossfire from its cannon. Some of the women ran into the river and tried to swim its expanse. Two Skies didn’t know that the army had hired Sioux to wait on the far bank and kill any who managed to cross, and finally she slipped into the water, clamping her teeth into the soft loose skin at the back of the baby’s neck, leaving her hands free to swim. Her teeth bit into the infant’s flesh and she could taste her brother’s blood, and the muscles in her own neck and shoulders became agonized by the strain of keeping the little head above the water. She tired quickly and knew if she continued, she and the infant would drown. The current of the river swept them downstream, away from the fire, and she turned back toward land, swimming like a fox or a squirrel moving young. When she had achieved the shore, she lay next to the screaming baby, trying not to see his ruined neck.

  Soon she picked up He-Who-Owns-Land and carried him away from the sound of firing. A woman sat on the riverbank, and as they approached, Two Skies saw it was her sister. Tall Woman was covered with blood but she told Two Skies it wasn’t hers, a soldier had been raping her when a bullet hit him in the side. She had managed to get out from under his bloody body; he had lifted a hand and asked for help in his language, and she had taken a rock and killed him.

  She managed to tell her story but didn’t comprehend when Two Skies told her of their mother’s death. The sound of screams and firing seemed closer. Two Skies carried her brother and led her sister deep into riverside brush, and the three of them huddled. Tall Woman didn’t speak, but He-Who-Owns-Land never stopped his high-pitched bawling, and Two Skies was afraid soldiers would hear him and come. She opened her dress and lifted his mouth to her undeveloped breast. The little nipple grew under the dry tugging of his lips and she held the baby close.

  As hours passed, the firing grew less frequent and the tumult died. Afternoon shadows were long when she heard the approaching steps of a patrol, and the baby started to cry again. She thought of strangling He-Who-Owns-Land so she and Tall Woman might live. Instead, she did nothing but wait, and in a few minutes a skinny white boy poked his musket into the brush and then dragged them out.

  On the way to the steamboat, wherever they looked they saw familiar dead without ears or scalps. On the deck, the Long Knives assembled thirty-nine women and children. Everyone else had been killed. The baby was still crying, and a Winnebago looked at the emaciated infant with the torn neck. “Little rat,” he said scornfully, but a redheaded soldier with two yellow stripes on his blue sleeve mixed sugar and water in a whiskey bottle and stuck a rag into it. He pulled the baby from Two Skies’ arms and gave him the sugar teat to suck, and he walked away with a pleased face, carrying her brother. Two Skies tried to follow, but the Winnebago came and struck her across the head with his hand until her ears rang.
The boat moved away from the mouth of the Bad Ax, through the floating Sauk bodies. It carried them forty miles downriver to Prairie du Chien. At Prairie du Chien she and Tall Woman and three other Sauk girls, Smoke Woman, Moon, and Yellow Bird, were taken off the steamboat and placed in a wagon. Moon was younger than Two Skies. The other two were older, but not as old as Tall Woman. She didn’t know what became of the rest of the Sauk prisoners, and she never saw He-Who-Owns-Land again.

  The wagon came to an army post they later learned to call Fort Crawford but didn’t turn in, taking the young Sauk females three miles beyond the fort to a white farmhouse surrounded by outbuildings and fences. Two Skies could see plowed and planted fields, and several kinds of grazing animals, and fowl. Inside the house she could scarcely draw a breath because the air was foreign with harsh soap and polishing wax, a smell of mookamonik sanctity she loathed for the rest of her life. At the Evangelical School for Indian Girls, she had to endure it for four years.

  The school was run by Reverend Edvard Bronsun and Miss Eva, a middle-aged brother and sister. Nine years before, under the sponsorship of the Missionary Society of New York City, they had set forth to enter the wilderness and bring the heathen Indian to Jesus. They had started their school with two Winnebago girls, one of them feebleminded. Perversely, Indian females had resisted their repeated invitations to come and work the Bronsuns’ fields, tend their stock, whitewash and paint their buildings, and do their housework. It was only through the cooperation of law authorities and the military that their enrollment grew until, with the arrival of the Sauks, they had twenty-one sullen but obedient pupils tending one of the best-kept farms in their area.

  Mr. Edvard, tall and spare, with a freckled balding scalp, instructed the girls in agriculture and religion, while Miss Eva, corpulent and icy-eyed, taught how whiteskins expected floors to be scrubbed and furniture and woodwork to be polished. The pupils’ studies consisted of housework and unceasing heavy farm labor, learning to speak English, unlearning their native languages and culture, and praying to unfamiliar gods. Miss Eva, always smiling coldly, punished for infractions such as sloth or insolence or the use of an Indian word, utilizing supple switches cut from the farm’s greengage plum tree.

  The other pupils were Winnebago, Chippewa, Illinois, Kickapoo, Iroquois, and Potawatomi. All regarded the newcomers with hostility, but the Sauks didn’t fear them; arriving together, they were a tribal majority, although the system of the place sought to nullify this advantage. The first thing each new girl lost was her Indian name. The Bronsuns considered only six biblical names worthy of inspiring piety in a convert: Rachel, Ruth, Mary, Martha, Sarah, and Anna. Since this limited choice meant that several girls shared the same name, to avoid confusion they also gave each pupil a numeral that became available only when its owner left the school. Thus, Moon became Ruth Three; Tall Woman, Mary Four; Yellow Bird, Rachel Two; and Smoke Woman, Martha Three. Two Skies was Sarah Two.

  It wasn’t hard to adjust. The first English words they learned were “please” and “thank you.” At meals, all foods and drinks were identified once, in English. From then on, those who didn’t ask for them in English went hungry. The Sauk girls learned English quickly. The two daily meals were hominy and cornbread and hashed root vegetables. Meat, served rarely, was fatback or small game. Children who had experienced starvation always ate hungrily. Despite the hard work, they put flesh on their bones. The dullness disappeared from Tall Woman’s eyes, but of the five Sauks she was most likely to forget herself and speak in the language of the People, and so she was beaten most often. In their second month at the school, Miss Eva heard Tall Woman whispering in the Sauk tongue and whipped her severely while Mr. Edvard watched. That night Mr. Edvard came into the dark attic dormitory and whispered that he had salve to spread on Mary Four’s back to remove the pain. He led Tall Woman out of the dormitory.

  Next day, Mr. Edvard gave Tall Woman a bag of cornbread that she shared with the other Sauks. After that, he often came to the dormitory at night for Tall Woman, and the Sauk girls grew accustomed to the extra food.

  Within four months Tall Woman began to be sick in the mornings, and she and Two Skies knew even before it showed in her belly that she was with child.

  A few weeks later Mr. Edvard hitched the horse to the buggy and Miss Eva took Tall Woman in the buggy with her and drove away. When she came back alone, she told Two Skies her sister was blessed. Miss Eva said from now on Mary Four would work on a fine Christian farm on the other side of Fort Crawford. Two Skies never saw Tall Woman again.

  Whenever Two Skies was sure they were alone, she spoke to the other Sauks in their own tongue. Picking potato bugs, she told them stories Union-of-Rivers had told her. Weeding beets, she sang the songs of the Sauks. Chopping wood, she spoke to them of Sauk-e-nuk and of the winter camp, reminding them of the dances and festivals, and of kinsmen dead and alive. If they didn’t answer in their own language, she threatened to beat them worse than Miss Eva did. Although two of the girls were older and larger than she, none challenged her, and they kept their old language.

  When they had been there more than three and a half years, a Sioux girl came as a new pupil. Wing Flapper was older than Tall Woman. She was of the band of Wabashaw, and at night she taunted the Sauks with stories of how her father and her brothers had waited on the far bank of Masesibowi and had killed and scalped every one of their Sauk enemies who had made it across the river during the massacre at the mouth of the Bad Ax. Wing Flapper was given Tall Woman’s name, Mary Five. From the start, Mr. Edvard fancied her. Two Skies dreamed of killing her, but Wing Flapper’s presence proved fortunate, for within a few months she too was pregnant; perhaps Mary was a begetting name.

  Two Skies watched Wing Flapper’s belly grow, and planned and prepared. Miss Eva drove Wing Flapper away in the buggy on a hot, still summer’s day. Mr. Edvard was one person, so he couldn’t watch everyone. As soon as the woman was gone, Two Skies dropped the hoe she’d been wielding in the beet field and crept out of sight behind the barn. She piled fat pine kindling against the dry timbers and ignited them with the sulfur matches she’d stolen and set aside for this moment. By the time the fire was noticed, the barn was well ablaze. Mr. Edvard ran in from the potato field like a crazy man, shouting and pop-eyed, and directed the girls to set up a bucket brigade.

  Two Skies stayed cool amid the general excitement. She gathered up Moon, Yellow Bird, and Smoke Woman. As an afterthought she took one of Miss Eva’s plum switches and used it to move the farm’s great porker out of the deep black mud of the sty. She drove the pig into Miss Eva’s scrubbed and polished pious-smelling house and closed the door. Then she led the others into the woods and away from that mookamon place.

  They avoided roads, staying in the woods until they reached the river. An oak log was snagged on the bank, and the four girls pushed it free. The warm waters contained the bones and ghosts of their loved ones and embraced the girls as they held on to the log and let Masesibowi carry them southward.

  They left the river when it began to grow dark. That night they slept hungry in the woods. In the morning, picking berries in a riverside patch, they found a hidden Sioux canoe and stole it at once, hoping it belonged to a kinsman of Wing Flapper. It was midafternoon when they rounded a bend and came upon Prophetstown. On the bank, a red man was cleaning fish. When they saw he was a Mesquakie they laughed in relief and sent the canoe arrowing toward him.

  As soon as he was able after the war, White Cloud had returned to Prophetstown. The white-skinned soldiers had burned his longhouse along with the others, but he built another hedonoso-te. When word was spread that the shaman had returned, families came as before from several tribes and raised lodges nearby so they could live their lives close to him. Other disciples arrived from time to time, but now he looked with special interest at the four small girls who had escaped the whites and blundered their way to him. For days he scrutinized them while they rested and fed in his lodge, noting the way three of them looke
d to the fourth for guidance in all things. He questioned them separately and at length, and each of them told him of Two Skies.

  Always, Two Skies. He began to watch her with growing hope.

  Finally he caught two ponies from his string and told Two Skies to come with him. She rode behind his horse for most of a day, until the ground began to rise. All mountains are sacred, but in flat country even a hill is a holy place; on the wooded hilltop he led her into a clearing musky with the smell of bears, where the bones of animals were scattered, and ashes of dead fires.

  When they dismounted, Wabokieshiek took the blanket from his shoulders and told her to disrobe and lie on it. Two Skies dared not refuse, though she was certain the old shaman meant to use her sexually. But when Wabokieshiek touched her, it wasn’t as a lover. He examined her until he was satisfied she was intact.

  As the sun lowered, they went into the nearby woods and he set three snares. Then he built a fire in the clearing and sat by it, chanting while she lay on the ground and slept.

  When she woke, he had collected a rabbit from one of the snares and was slitting the belly. Two Skies was hungry but he made no move to cook the rabbit; instead, he fingered the viscera and studied them at greater length than he had examined the body of the girl. When he had finished, he grunted in satisfaction and looked at her warily and with wonder.

  After he and Black Hawk had heard about the massacre of their people at the Bad Ax River, their spirits had sickened. They had wanted no more Sauks to die under their leadership, so they had given themselves up to the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien. At Fort Crawford they had been turned over to a young army lieutenant named Jefferson Davis, who had taken his prisoners down Masesibowi to St. Louis. All winter they were confined in Jefferson Barracks, suffering the humiliation of the ball and chain. In the spring, to show the whiteskins how completely their army had vanquished the People, the Great Father in Washington ordered the two prisoners brought to American cities. They saw railroads for the first time and traveled on them to Washington, New York, Albany, and Detroit. Everywhere, crowds like buffalo herds came to gape at the curiosities, the defeated “Indian chiefs.”