Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (30 page)

“Yes, one was so honored.”

“Was it perhaps the grandson of my neighbor you may remember, Madame Doucet?”

“I could not say,” Little Quail answered hurriedly. “I did not hear the name.”

Elise asked after the African slaves of the French community and learned that many had been sold, her own among them, following the attack by the slaves of New Orleans on the Chouachas Indians at Perier’s instigation. Some had gone to the Spanish, some to the Carolina English by way of the Chickasaws and the Creeks, some to the Tensas who would trade them in New Orleans. Then they spoke of other things, of the warming of the day as the sun rose higher, of Elise’s thankfulness of finding Little Quail there.

“I came because I wished to welcome you,” the young woman said with a shy smile, “and because Hawk-of-the-Night has no woman to cook for him and I knew you would be very tired after the long journey. Later, if you wish, I will show you the Natchez way of preparing food and furs and all the other things you must know.”

The words had an ominous sound, as if Little Quail expected her stay among them to be long. “That … is very good of you.”

“It is only to repay your kindness when I was sold by my father into your home.”

“Then I thank you,” Elise answered and refused to look at Reynaud, who lay quietly listening to the exchange.

The gruel, seasoned with bear, fat and honey, was delicious, or else Elise was hungry. Little Quail served it to Elise and Reynaud where they sat on the sleeping bench. When her bowl was empty, Elise looked around for her clothes, preparing to rise. Her habit had disappeared, however, and in its place was a pile of folded cloth. Soft, finely woven, the material, when shaken out, was squares made of swansdown dyed rust-red. The large square was to be tied on the right hip as a skirt, with the smaller square serving as a top covering if tied on the shoulder. There was also a cape of cured and bleached doeskin embroidered with red and black beads. To complete the costume was a pair of moccasins with beaded toes and ties at the ankles to keep them snugly on the feet.

“Where are my things?” Elise asked, her tone sharp.

“Gone.” There was complete unconcern in Little Quail’s answer.

“Gone?”

“Burned.”

“What!”

“You could not want to wear anything so soiled?”

The woman’s expression held surprise and a certain flashing mischief that the man beside her seemed to share. Remembering Reynaud’s attempt once before to persuade her to wear Indian dress, Elise rounded on him. “You did this!

“I might have if I had thought of it, but no. I had nothing to do with it.”

“I can’t wear those!” Elise gestured with one outflung hand toward the squares of leather.

“It’s easy, once you have the knack of it. Little Quail win show you how — unless, of course, you prefer to stay here in the bed furs with me.”

She threw him a scathing look, then reached out slowly to take up the soft swansdown squares.

If it had not been for the fear of sending Little Quail into gales of laughter and the certainty of Reynaud making some snide comment, Elise would have asked him to leave the hut while she dealt with the unfamiliar costume or to at least turn his head. As it was, she did her best to ignore him as the Indian women seemed to do so well. It was not easy, not while he lay with his hands locked behind his head watching with an interest so unabashed that it appeared he was laying claim to the right to view her in any state of dress or undress. He found her self-consciousness amusing, she thought, and did everything in his power to heighten it. He surveyed the rose-coral-tipped globes of her breasts, as she turned this way and that way tying to tie the strange skirt, with a proprietorial appreciation and allowed a spark of heat to smoulder at the back of his eyes as he caught a glimpse of the long white length of her thigh that was exposed at the side when it was knotted.

From outside the door of the hut, which was a simple panel that slid back and forth between posts to open and close, came a quiet greeting. Reynaud looked away reluctantly from Elise as she flung her cape around her. He pushed himself erect with a bed fur over his lap, but made no other effort toward dressing before he called out his permission to enter. The panel eased open and a young man stepped inside.

“Magani,
” he said with a swift gesture of his right hand, a request to speak.

“St. Cosine!” Reynaud sat up straighter, reaching out his own hand as he added the greeting, “
Tachete-cabanacte.”

The two men clasped wrists, then Reynaud turned to Elise. “I present my half-brother, St. Cosme, named, in case you are curious, for the French priest who baptized him at the time of his birth. St. Cosme, this lady is Madame Elise Laffont.”

Younger than Reynaud and the Great Sun, the man before her had the same handsome features and grave, yet polished, manner. He inclined his head, smiling, before he turned back to his half-brother. “I come on a matter of importance.”

“Speak as you will,” Reynaud answered, indicating that he should be seated.

His half-brother dropped down onto the foot of the bench on which Reynaud reclined. Little Quail hurried to offer refreshment, which the visitor accepted, tasting the hot herb drink at once so as not to offend her. Then as was the custom, since he was the guest and it was his duty to speak first, he began to deliver what sounded like a carefully rehearsed message.

Elise could not follow all of it, but thought it was a matter of a council. Little Quail stood still, her eyes wide. Reynaud listened carefully, then signified his agreement to some request. His half-brother rose shortly thereafter and took his leave. Reynaud, stepping out of the bed furs with smooth economy of motion and total lack of concern for his nakedness, began to get dressed.

“What is it?” Elise asked.

“Nothing that need be of concern to you,” he answered.

She was doubtful that he told her the truth, but since it seemed likely the matter was one that concerned his new position as war chief, she did not question him further. She did not care to become involved in an argument in front of Little Quail.

When he was ready, he moved toward her, reaching out to grasp her forearms. Before she could free herself, he brushed the firm warmth of his lips lightly across her forehead. He released her, inclined his head, and swung away, letting himself out of the hut.

Elise looked at Little Quail in brief puzzlement. The woman was fussing with the fire, however, her attention upon her task without concern for the affairs of men. Trying to shake off the peculiar feeling that something was not quite right, Elise joined her.

Little Quail began at once to instruct her. The tasks were not difficult to follow. The French had adopted so many of the Indian ways, Indian foods, and methods of preparations, that there was little difference in cooking except in the utensils used. The Indians used many kinds of containers. There were tightly woven baskets of many shapes and sizes to hold everything from nuts and berries to fish; pottery ranging from bowls large enough to hold bushels of corn, to fat bottles bigger than gallon jugs, from small bowls that served as drinking glasses, to tiny bottles that were used for weaned babies. Most of the pottery was of a golden brown clay excised with a swirling design of parallel lines that had the look of sea waves, though there were also pieces colored with orange-red ochre. The pots used for cooking over the fire were often of clay, or so Little Quail said. The food in them was cooked not by setting the pot over the heat, but by heating clean rocks, which were then dropped into the pot to bring the contents to a boil. In Reynaud’s hut, however, the pots were of iron, as they were in the huts of all the wealthier Indians thanks to the traders like Pierre.

Among Elise’s neighbors, there had been some who scorned to use wild meat, preferring the rancid salt pork that came in barrels from France, and who subsisted on a diet of white flour and dried beans instead of using the maize, squash, and sweet potatoes of the Indians. Elise had always considered them to be fools, especially when the fall storms made the arrival of the supply ships uncertain and these same people began to look pinched with hunger. Now more than ever it was good that she was familiar with such changes in diet since it seemed that henceforth, as on the trail, it would be a part of her duties to cook for Reynaud.

She toyed with the idea of refusing, if only to discover once and for all whether or not she was truly a slave. But there seemed little point. She preferred not to challenge Little Quail’s friendship in such a way or to waste her energy defying Reynaud on such an unimportant point. She herself had to eat and if she did not cook at his fire, then she would have to go begging at the cook fires of others, which would do little for her dignity.

She could refuse to share his hut, of course, demanding to be allowed to join the other Frenchwomen instead. But as awkward as it might be to live in close quarters with Reynaud, it would be infinitely harder to live and work with a strange family of Indians, as she might be forced to do if she left his protection. No, the privacy of his hut was much better, even if it did mean having to serve him.

As she watched Little Quail making corn cakes, patting them into shape, and setting them to cook on the bottom of an iron pot smeared with hot bear grease, she flirted with the idea of escape. The more she studied the problem, however, the less likely the chances of success seemed. Here in the Grand Village she was surrounded by watchful Natchez. Even if she could get away without being seen, it was forty leagues to Fort Saint Jean Baptiste and more than ninety leagues to New Orleans by the way of the great river. They were long leagues swarming with potentially hostile Indians and wild animals, leagues of treacherous water, swamps, and dark woods. She hoped that she did not lack initiative, but this obstacle of combined distance and danger seemed insurmountable. It was better to be a slave to Reynaud than to be dead. She contemplated that truth and found it grimly amusing. What was not funny at all was the question of how she was to refrain from sharing his bed furs as well as his hut and cook fire. She would discover an answer, however. She would indeed.

The village seemed quiet as the morning advanced. Little Quail remarked upon it after a time. She thought the cause might be the arrival of a new trader or perhaps even a visit from the Englishmen of Carolina offering a bounty for slaves and French scalps. It was the fear that it might be news of more casualties in the war with the French, however, that finally caused the young Indian woman to leave the hut to look into the matter. It seemed that them were hunting parties out and bands sent to discover the intentions of the Choctaws, Tunicas, and Natchitoches.

When Little Quail did not return after an hour, Elise grew worried. It was probably that any disaster that struck the Natchez would affect the French being held by them, including herself. Reynaud’s absence did not concern her. It was not unusual for him to be gone for hours at a time, without explanation.

She thought of going out herself to see what was happening, but she was not certain how she would be greeted by the people in the village. Nor was she happy at the prospect of going abroad in her scanty costume. It had a most insubstantial feel, as if she were dressed for bed, and was not only as drafty as Reynaud had once claimed, but was also apt to flap about her in such a way that large portions of her anatomy were exposed when she least expected it. She was not a puritan by any means, but it was disconcerting to say the least to look down and discover that her top square of material had twisted to reveal a breast or that her skirt had slipped scandalously low on her hips.

She was very near to braving all obstacles, however, when the door of the hut was thrown open. A young French girl with a scared look on her face stepped inside without ceremony or permission. Drawing herself up, she said in breathless tones, “My mistress comes.”

An Indian woman moved into view. Tall, handsome in a majestic fashion, she strode forward with a cape made of a red trader’s blanket swirling around her and her arms, clasped with silver bracelets, crossed over her chest. She dismissed her servant with a brief gesture and entered the hut to confront Elise alone.

Elise searched her brain for the correct phrase of welcome, finding it at last. When no reply was forthcoming, she began to offer refreshment.

“Thank you, no,” the Indian woman stated in a hard voice. “I wanted only to see the woman for whom my son must face death.”

Elise stared at the other woman with the color draining from her face. There could be only one explanation. “You mean Reynaud?

“Is there another who must risk so much?”

“I don’t—” Elise stopped, then went on in a different vein. “You must be Tattooed Arm.”

“I am she.”

This was the woman who had exposed the plot of the Natchez to the French. The woman who had loved a Frenchman and was mother to the Great Sun, as well as to Reynaud. “I don’t understand what you mean. I’ve done nothing to endanger your son.”

“You live.”

Elise was silent for a stunned instant in the face of such a pronouncement. When she found her breath, she said, “Yes, but surely—”

“Tomorrow at sunrise he will run the gauntlet for your sake.”

“For me? But why?”

“He has been accused in council by Path Bear, the son of my youngest brother and a woman of common blood. Path Bear claims that the new war chief of the Natchez loves the French too well, that he is a traitor to our people. This was said because he aided in the escape of a number of French people and did this out of desire for you, a Frenchwoman. For you he tarried far from here when my people had need of him, causing much inconvenience when it was confirmed by the elders that he was the proper choice as war chief. Finally, he challenged Path Bear before his fellow warriors over the trifling matter of a few blows for you and would have committed the crime of engaging in combat with him had not a cooler head, that of Path Bear himself, prevailed.”