Panther in the Sky (66 page)

“And so you see what has happened to us. We were fools to take all these things that weakened us. We did not need them then, but we believe we need them now. We turned our backs on the old ways. Instead of thanking Weshemoneto for all we used to have, we turned to the white men and asked them for more. So now we depend upon the very people who destroy us! This is our weakness! Our corruption! Our Creator scolded me,
‘If you had lived the way I taught you, the white men could never have got you under their foot!’

“And that is why Our Creator purified me and sent me down to you full of the shining power: to make you what you were before! As you sit before me I will tell you the many rules Our Creator gave me for you. I will tell you how I went to the World Above. When I tell you of the punishments I saw, they will terrify you! But listen: Those punishments will be upon
you,
unless you follow me through the door that I am opening for you!”

The hundreds of people sat like children before a storyteller as he related again his travel through the sky. Their faces were soft with longing as he described the paradise he had been permitted to see but not to enter. And then as he described Matchemoneto’s house of smoke and torment, they winced and moaned. Some covered their ears because they could not bear to hear of it but then uncovered them for fear of missing some words that would save them from it. When he told of the Worst Sinners who went clear into the fire, or those Lesser Sinners who were only burned on their limbs, the people were wondering to which fire their own departed ones had gone or were wondering which fire they themselves deserved. When he described the punishment of the drunkards, many people rocked to and fro and wept, because, as he had said, everyone had some relatives who faced that punishment.

As the sun rose to midday, Open Door went on and on with the story of his journey. Even the few people who still doubted him were afraid; whether he had seen it himself or only learned of it some other way, the afterworld surely was as he described it, and everyone was eager to learn how to take the right road and avoid the left one.

Tecumseh grew ever more amazed at his brother’s speaking powers. In this great oratorical flight he recognized many elements. Much of Tecumseh’s own doctrine was in it, and some of the fables told by Black Fish and Black Hoof were there and some Bible things he must have overheard from Big Fish and perhaps the Shakers, and probably there was more than a little of his own strange imagination. Tecumseh, who knew Loud Noise as well as anyone had, could almost point to the origin of each phrase that came forth. But he did not doubt that his brother had dreamed in his trance or that his spirit actually had been taken away and inspired. All these recognizable embellishments were, like those a child puts on the retelling of a dream in the morning, no less a part of his true soul, or they had come through Tecumseh
from the same divine source and thus were true. The spiritual force Open Door was creating here would not remain confined to this crowd of listeners; it would spread like light in darkness, from village to village, from tribe to tribe, from nation to nation. Tecumseh could not doubt it: his brother’s miracle was a part of the great design that had been coming in signs since his own childhood. However Open Door might color the words, he was surely a Messenger.

Now Open Door held up his short stick with its fire feathers on the end and passed it before him in a half circle and cried in that strange, flutelike voice:

“Here is what Our Creator told me we must do, to be happy and strong and proud as we were before we listened to white men. Listen well! Here is the way to stay out of the house of fire and go to the beautiful country I saw at first. Some of it will be hard for us! Now listen to me with all the power of your attention:

“No red man must ever drink liquor, or he will go and have the hot lead poured in his mouth! You know I have been a slave to liquor since first I tasted it. But never again will I take any! If ever you saw me taste it again, you would know that what I tell you is false!”

Tecumseh and Star Watcher looked at each other across the crowd, both amazed at the conviction in his statement. Surely their brother knew what he was putting at risk by promising to curb that appetite for liquor! If he had had any doubt about his dream, that would have been the last thing he would have forsworn.

“This also Our Creator told me:

“No red man shall take more than one wife in the future. No red man shall run after women. If he is single, let him take a wife, and lie only with her.

“If any wife behaves badly, her husband may whip her. But then they shall look each other in the face and laugh together, and have no more ill will.

“Any red woman who is living with a white man must return to her people, and must leave her children with the husband, so that all nations will be pure in their blood.

“Our Creator told me there are too many doing witchcraft, and using their medicine bags for false beliefs. All the People must gather together to destroy their personal medicine bags, in the presence of all, for all our medicine now is in the shining power I have been given!”

A murmur of astonishment swept through the crowd, because
in their medicine bags the People kept the sacred things that protected them and healed them. “I tell you what I was told!” Open Door’s voice carried over this hubbub. “We cannot save ourselves from corruption by doing only little, easy things! Listen! And when you destroy your medicine bags you will make an open confession of all the bad deeds you have done, and beg forgiveness. You heard me confess all my sins, which were much worse than yours, and I did so because it is required by the Great Good Spirit! Only light will cure moldiness; only light will purify your spirits. Soon I will call us all together for this cleansing, and anyone who wants to follow me through the open door to goodness will have to do this, or else be doomed!”

When these words had cowed the crowd back into silence, Open Door resumed. “Now hear what I was told about dealing with white men! These things we must do, to cleanse ourselves of their corruption!” Many of the listeners seemed relieved that he was directing himself away toward that race. Few of the men or women really had any direct association with whites.

“Our foods are sacred. Our Grandmother taught us how to hunt and raise these foods, to select seeds and continue the best strains. These foods are for us only. Never sell any of our food to a white person. If a white man comes to you hungry, give him a little, only to give him strength to go away!

“Do not eat any food that is raised or cooked by a white person. It is not good for us. Eat not their bread made of wheat, for Our Creator gave us corn for our bread. Eat not the meat of their filthy swine, nor of their chicken fowls, nor the beef of their cattle, which are tame and thus have no spirit in them. Their foods will seem to fill your empty belly, but this deceives you, for food without spirit does not nourish you.”

Tecumseh remembered the food he had eaten with Ga-lo-weh and his family in his visits over the years. Sometimes it had been game and corn, but often beef and wheat. The things Open Door was saying pointed at everybody in some way.

“There are two kinds of white men,” Open Door went on. “There are the Americans, and there are the others. You may give your hand in friendship to the French, or the Spaniards, or the British. But the Americans are not like those. The Americans come from the slime of the sea, with mud and weeds in their claws, and they are a kind of crayfish serpent whose claws grab in our earth and take it from us.”

Tecumseh recognized that as one of his own figures of speech that he had used in anger once long ago. This was good. Tenskwatawa,
the Open Door, could not have said anything more in harmony with Tecumseh’s purposes than this.

Open Door, who had been talking for almost three hours, went on with his commandments.

“Wear only clothing that you have made from skins and sewn with sinew. I see here wool garments and hats made by white men. Give those back to the first white person you see.

“In our towns there are dogs of the white men’s kind, those whose ears hang down. I saw such a dog watching me from behind a tree with white men’s eyes, and I knew: these are prowling our towns with the white man’s spirit in them. And there are cats that you got from the white men. These are bad animals. Often a witch takes the shape of a cat. You must kill these cats and dogs, or else take them to a white man’s town and leave them there.”

This commandment was heard with almost as much dismay as that of the medicine bags. The white man’s kinds of dogs were more trusting and amiable than the wolflike Indian dogs, and many people had grown attached to the ones they had. Some red men had learned how to use the long-eared dogs to help them hunt and thus found them useful. Some of the big dogs could pull almost as much baggage on a travois as a pony could. And the cats were liked by children and helped keep rodents out of the grain. “Yes! I told you! Some of these steps to purification will be hard!”

The next was hard indeed:

“The fire struck by white man’s steel is not sacred fire. You must put out such fire in your lodges and kindle a new fire using the old way, and this will be a sacred fire.” Most of the women groaned and gasped. Making fire without flint and steel was very hard and tedious. “You must never let this sacred fire go out, for it is your reborn spirit, beginning now, and if it goes out, so will your life go out. When you move from place to place you must bear sacred coals with you, as we did in the ancient times, and rekindle the fire when you arrive.

“And now listen:

“The Great Good Spirit wants our men to hunt and kill game as in the ancient days, with the silent arrow and the lance and the snare, and no longer with guns.”

Here again was more of Tecumseh’s practical thinking that he had absorbed sometime; with game growing more scarce every year, gunshots drove animals away from a hunting ground. But another practical reason for this was as Open Door now said: “If we hunt in the old ways, we will not have to depend upon white
men, for new guns and powder and lead, or go to them to have broken guns repaired. Remember it is the wish of the Great Good Spirit that we have no more commerce with white men!”

It was evident from the expressions in the men’s faces, though, that this would be a hardship. So many had lost, or never even had, the skill needed for stalking and killing game with a bow. But these were commandments brought to the People from heaven, and they must be obeyed. Many of the men sat in humility, almost in despair, wondering if they would even be able to feed their families. As if seeing their thoughts, Open Door told them: “It will take us a while to become such hunters again. We may keep our guns, and if we need to defend ourselves against American white men, the guns will kill them because they are a white man’s weapon. But arrows will kill American intruders, too! You must go to the grandfathers and have them teach you to make good bows and shape arrowheads, and you must recover the old hunting skills. That is what the Creator instructed me to tell you.

“And now listen, for here is the most important message I bring you:

“The Great Good Spirit will call me from time to time and teach me more to help you. Our Creator told me that all red men who refuse to obey these laws are bad people, or witches, and must be put to death. Anyone who does not wish to live in a way that pleases Weshemoneto must want instead to please Matchemoneto, and such a person must be a witch. Witches should be killed, for they divide the People and weaken their spirit.” This was a chilling announcement, but the people were quick to nod agreement to it, because many did believe that witchcraft was a cause of much of their anxiety. To live in the midst of a witch-hunt was a frightful ordeal, as anyone could be accused and tried. But it had been done before in the People’s past, and after the hunts had come light and freedom from fear.

“Hear me, my People,” Open Door intoned, raising his stick and staff and holding them as he had in the beginning of this long and disturbing oration. “All red men will soon know these messages I have brought. They are hungry for guidance from heaven. I will tell the people I see, and you will tell those you see. But I warn you: Our Creator thundered and said that anyone who reveals these laws to any white men will die at once, and never be shown the right road!

“The Great Good Spirit will appoint a place to be our holy town, and at that place I will call
all
red men to come and share
this shining power. For the People in all tribes are corrupt and miserable! In that holy town we will pray every morning and every night for the earth to be fruitful, and the game and fish to be plentiful again. We will no longer do the frolic dances that excite lust and make us silly. Instead, the Great Good Spirit will teach me the old dances we did before the corruption, and from these dances we will receive strength and happiness!”

All red men!
Tecumseh shivered at the sound of that. Open Door with his appeal to the yearnings of all the miserable red men must be the way to bring the tribes together despite their many-headedness! Open Door truly must be, then, an instrument of Weshemoneto’s design!
All red men!

“Now I, Tenskwatawa, He-Opens-the-Door, will go and be alone for a while, to learn more of what we must do. I have told you everything I know, but soon I will know more. You will go and tell what you have learned here, but tell it to no white man, or to anyone who would tell it to a white man. Get rid of cats and long-eared dogs! Make good bows! Put out your fires made with steel, and kindle an everlasting fire by wood on wood. Turn your backs on the whiskey sellers and the traders, and do not listen to the Jesus missionaries!

“Look among yourselves for witches, and note who they are, and they will be judged soon. How will you know witches? I will tell you: They will be doing commerce with Americans, and going to their treaty councils, against the warnings of Our Creator.

“And they will start whispering to you that Open Door is not a true holy man or prophet!
That
is how you will know witches!”