Panther in the Sky (14 page)

It was when he was near springs of water that Tecumseh most often felt the magic that was in the world.

Now, trotting up the street toward the council lodge where the crowd was gathered, Tecumseh was thinking about signs and could feel upon himself the weight of the gift. As his father had told him, his life would not be easy; like a chief or a shaman, he would have more duties to do than an ordinary warrior, and the People would rely upon him, because the Panther Star in the sky at his birth had pointed him out.

“Oh,” a woman cried to another woman, “here they come!”

“Look at them,” the other squealed. “Such beautiful soldiers!”

Tecumseh could not see them yet, but he could feel a thrill of excitement running through the crowd of people. Though he was tall for his age, he could see only the backs and shoulders of the grown-up people in the pressing crowd. He was being jostled backward now by people who were surging back, making way. So he slithered forward among them, and suddenly he was on the front edge of the crowd, and there in the open, not five paces away and coming toward him, were the two biggest and most elegant
men Tecumseh had ever seen. Chief Black Fish was walking between them, and he looked little. These two were glittering and blazing in the sunlight, their hair silver, their faces pale pink and grim with importance. Tecumseh looked at them with his mouth open, too stunned to move back.

Their coats were scarlet wool and covered with gold-colored metal buttons and braids of golden thread. Gleaming silver gorgets the shape of new moons flashed at their throats. Brilliant silk sashes crossed their chests, and from these hung knives as long as a man’s arm, ensheathed in black leather trimmed with silver; these, Chiksika had told him, were the weapons for whom the Long Knives had been named. The soldiers wore black leggings that reached to their thighs. And on their heads, atop the silver curls that covered their ears, they wore huge black headdresses of bear fur with plates of silver and gold in front. These men looked like sun gods.

If these were what whiteface soldiers were like, Tecumseh thought, how brave his father and brother must have been to go and fight ten hundred of them! The only white men Tecumseh had seen before were French traders, who were small, dirty men, and the naked man in the gauntlet.

Now he drew back as the giant white men came closer. He saw that Black Fish had a proud, pleased look in his eyes as he strode forward with one of these mighty men on either side.

They passed directly in front of Tecumseh, and their tread was very heavy. He was devouring with his eyes every detail of them, and through their shining glory now he was beginning to see and sense other things. The one closest to him had a sheen of sweat on his face, and there was a sore-looking red boil on his neck above his tight collar. The white of his trousers was smudged with dirt. There were spots on the scarlet coat, like those of meat grease on a dirty blanket. His leather shoes creaked and his long knife rattled as he walked by, and he sounded as if he had trouble breathing.

Then Tecumseh’s keen nostrils were assailed by the man’s smells. Eddying in the air around him were the dense, sour odors of old sweat and smoke in wool, of mouth rot and tobacco, even traces of the odors of urine and excrement. Tecumseh’s nose wrinkled, and he recoiled. Even his mother, who had not bathed herself or changed her garment in the year of her mourning, had never smelled like this. Chiksika had told Tecumseh that white men had a bad smell about them. But Tecumseh had not guessed
it could be like this. He wondered how they could bear to be near each other.

And even under that repulsive stench, Tecumseh detected something else, or so he thought.

This giant, stern-faced man, who looked like a sun god, who was as thick as a large tree and taller than any warrior, walking through the town under the protective hospitality of Black Fish, smelled afraid.

“I
SMELLED FEAR ON HIM,
” T
ECUMSEH SAID TO
C
HIKSIKA
later that day. “Can this be so?”

Chiksika paused. He had one finger in a little jar of ocher, with which he was painting lines and dots from the corners of his eyes to his ears. He was preparing for the war dance that was to be held for the white soldier chiefs.

“Yes,” Chiksika replied. “It is plain that they have some fear among us. Here is why, I think: Only last year these men were our enemies. They were with the white chief Dunmore when he came with his army. They were numerous then. Now there are just these two chiefs amid our people. These two and some men who brought horses loaded with gifts. And new guns, and much powder and lead for the guns. They are a little afraid because last year we were their enemies and we killed many of them.” Chiksika held up his mother’s old French trade mirror with his left hand and ran a line of paint along his right temple.

“Guns? Our enemies bring us guns?”

“Here is the way of it, little brother. These men come to say they now wish us to be their allies. These men tell us they belong to the British king across the Great Water over there.” He pointed with his paint-stained finger toward the east. “You have heard of the king of England. They are his. Now they want us to call that king our father. They say he is the chief of the mightiest nation in the world. Here is what has happened since last year among the white men. This they told in council today:

“They say that their king beyond the Water is angry with the white men who live on this side. The ones we call the Long Knives. They say the Long Knives are not obedient to their king anymore, and grow saucy. They say there have already been some battles between the king’s soldiers and the Long Knives. That there will surely be a war.

“They say the English king does not want the Long Knives to come into our country and take our land from us. They say we are under the protection of their king. They say that king
wants us to be strong and to drive the Long Knives out of Kain-tuck-ee. And so he sends us guns and powder. And new blankets and good knives made in his country over there. And he will let his Redcoat soldier chiefs help us drive the Long Knives out of Kain-tuck-ee. Black Fish likes this. He says he wants to help the king’s soldiers do this. And so we will have a war dance for the English king’s soldier chiefs tonight.” He dipped his finger in his paint jar again, leaned toward the mirror, and made another line on his face.

“But,” Tecumseh said, remembering something, “there was a treaty made last year after the battle. Do you remember? That we would not raise our hand against the white men anymore? Was that not a kind of promise to them? I thought only the white men broke promises.”

“That treaty,” Chiksika replied, “was made by the white chief Dunmore of Virginia. He belongs to the English king. So that treaty is not broken. It is only the Long Knives who come into our country and bother us now, not the king’s white men. And the king wants us to stand against those Long Knives.”

Tecumseh thought of this and nodded. But he remembered something else. “Did not Cornstalk promise he would never raise his hand against
any
white men?”

“You remember things well. Cornstalk did so. And he has already told these English chiefs that he cannot help them, because of that promise. Cornstalk made himself helpless. But Black Fish did not mark a treaty. And the Shawnee law is that a man who does not make a promise is free to do what his heart tells him, even if the chief above him is bound by the promise. Black Fish is free to help the British soldiers fight the Long Knives.” Chiksika stopped painting his face and looked at his little brother. “Therefore Black Fish is very glad he did not mark the treaty. He believes that this purpose of the king of England will be a good thing for saving the People from the intrusion of the Long Knives.”

Tecumseh had no more questions. There was so much to think about from this day. He remembered now:

“Brother! Have you ever shot a running rabbit, while you were running? And did you know our mother is out of her year of mourning?”

I
T WAS THE TWENTIETH DAY OF THE
H
UNTER’S
M
OON, COLD
and gray, and most of the leaves had fallen to the ground, when Black Fish summoned Tecumseh to his lodge and told him that
it was time for him to start earning his
pa-waw-ka.
A chill of dread seized Tecumseh, for he had seen other eight-year-old boys in past winters earning their
pa-waw-kas,
and he knew it was going to be worse than anything he had ever had to do.

“When you have your
pa-waw-ka,”
Black Fish told him, looking at him with sharp eyes, “you will be able to get power from the Great Spirit when you most need it. You will wear your
pa-waw-ka
all the time, and when you have great trouble or terrible suffering, you will hold the
pa-waw-ka,
and the power and comfort will come like sacred fire into you through your hand. Your
pa-waw-ka
will be your most treasured thing. Sometime it might keep you alive, or help you defeat your strongest enemy. You even more than most warriors will need such a power to turn to because of the duties you will have someday. Because it is so important, you cannot get it easily. There is no short or easy way to get anything of great importance. Do you understand?”

Tecumseh nodded. “Yes, Father.”

“You must obey me. Every morning for the next four moons you will have to do this, at the beginning of every day. After the first morning you will probably say, ‘I cannot do this again.’ But you will have to do it the next morning, too. Even when the snow is on the ground and ice is on the river, you will have to do it. If, even one morning of that time, your spirit is not strong enough to make you do it, you will fail to earn the favor of Weshemoneto. Do you promise me now that you will do it each morning?”

Tecumseh shuddered. But he replied, “I promise, Father.”

Black Fish nodded, his craggy face unsmiling. “Good. Tomorrow morning at the first daylight you will begin. Your brother Chiksika long ago earned his
pa-waw-ka.
He will tell you how to strengthen your heart for it. Go to his lodge in the morning as soon as you are awake.”

The next morning when Turtle Mother squeezed Tecumseh’s foot to wake him up, the first thing he heard was sleet hissing and pattering on the bark roof of the
wigewa.
He had hoped it would be one of those sunny, mild days that sometimes occur during the Hunter’s Moon.

“Come,” said his mother. “It is time for you to go to Chiksika’s lodge.” Star Watcher smiled to encourage him.

He left the warm envelopment of his sleeping robe and dressed, standing as close as he could get to the fire, shivering and almost sick with dread. Outside the
wigewa
the air was raw and icy. Sleet pelted his face and hands like tiny arrows of ice. He shivered and set off at a hunch-shouldered run down the lane. The bare trees
and hulking huts were black against the hissing gray sky. It had rained most of the night before the sleet started. The path was covered with mashed, sodden, dark leaves, speckled white with sleet, dotted with puddles of cold rainwater. His moccasins were soaked at once and squished and splatted as he ran through the hissing gloom. He hoped that Chiksika would have a blazing fire in his hut but was afraid that he would not.

Chiksika was not married yet and lived alone. His little
wigewa
was about two hundred paces from the river, and Tecumseh could hear the river water running even at that distance. The river was high and fast from the night’s rain, and Tecumseh was frightened. The ordeal ahead would be dangerous as well as miserable.

When he turned back the door flap and ducked in, the little space was very warm with a smokeless fire of white oak. Chiksika was sitting on the opposite side of the fire, dressed and waiting. His weapons and medicine bag hung on a post behind him, and on his spear hung the scalp he had taken from the soldier at the battle of the Kanawha-se-pe. The brass trim of his gun gleamed with the firelight. The gun was a rifle he had taken from a dead enemy in that battle, a much better gun than the musket he had used before. The room was cozy and interesting, one of Tecumseh’s favorite places to visit, and it would have been a good place to sit on such a wet, dismal day, drinking hot sassafras or mint tea and hearing Chiksika tell stories. But for the next four moons, clear into the depth of winter, his visits to Chiksika’s hut were not to be such pleasures.

“Take off your clothes, little brother,” Chiksika told him even before he could sit to warm himself by the fire. “You will want to get this done as quickly as you can.”

When Tecumseh stood naked, his clothes on the ground, his tough, slender little body agleam like copper, Chiksika began the instruction.

“You remember what our father told us about the sacred fire. Tell me.”

“Yes. The People have the fire that was lit long ago. There are men whose duty it is to tend the fire and never let it go out.”

“Just so,” Chiksika said, “there is a fire inside the spirit of every Shawnee warrior. What does Shawnee mean?”

“It means People of the South.”

“Yes. And when we came up into this place of cold winters, the Sun gave each of us some of himself to keep us warm when we hunt in the winter and are away from the sacred fire of our home. Now listen to what I say:

“When you begin to earn your
pa-waw-ka,
you will be naked like this, and you will leap into the river every morning, in the deep place there so that even your head will be under the water.”

“Yes.”

“When you do this, only the fire of the Sun inside you will keep you from turning to ice. So listen: When you go into the river you must think very hard of the fire inside you. You must pray Weshemoneto will blow on it and make it flame up. The fire inside you must be greater than the cold on your skin. It is like when you are hunting in winter and you tell yourself that cold does not matter, that it is just a feeling, just as warmth or pain or pleasure are just feelings, and if you make yourself warm inside, you are able to bear it.”