Panther in the Sky (9 page)

“Tell me about her little dog and the Skemotah.”

Chiksika put his hand on Tecumseh’s shoulder and smiled. “It is like this. Kokomthena is always busy making something. She does not make people and animals anymore, because she finished them. But what she makes now is the Skemotah. She weaves on it every day, in her home near the moon. You tell me what the Skemotah is.”

“It is a big basket, or like a seine.”

“And is for what?”

“When the world ends, she will fish for all the People. The good ones she will lift to heaven in the seine, and the bad ones will fall through and be lost.”

Chiksika said, “I think you know this story very well already, little brother.”

“Yes. But what about her little dog?”

“Here it is about her little dog. All day every day she weaves the Skemotah. When she is finished with it, there will be nothing else for her to do, and so the world will end, and that is when she will fish for the good ones to take to heaven. But every night, when Our Grandmother Kokomthena is tired from her weaving and goes to sleep, her little dog wakes up …”

Tecumseh laughed and clapped his hands. “Because he has been sleeping all day at her feet!”

“Yes. And when she goes to sleep, the little dog is ready to play. So he takes the Skemotah in his teeth and unravels all she
has woven that day. And so because of her little dog, the world has not ended yet.”

Tecumseh smiled, then looked thoughtful. “The little dog is bad. But what he does is good for us. I would not want the world to end.”

“Would you not? Would you not want to go to heaven?”

“Someday. But not yet.”

“Ah. Why not now?” Chiksika was smiling at his little brother’s solemn concentration.

“Because I cannot, yet.”

“Why?”

“Because our father says I have a great thing to do. I do not yet even know what it is. But the world cannot end until I have done it.”

Chiksika was delighted by this. “Ha, ha!” He hugged Tecumseh to his side, and his laughter was rich and loud in the quiet woods. Tecumseh was infected by it, and his own child’s laugh rang out. It was a joy to learn to understand the world he lived in, and his brother Chiksika was his primary teacher, even more than was his father, who had less time because all the people in the tribe were in his care. It was as if his father had hundreds of children, many of them much older than himself. Tecumseh understood this about the chief and was very proud of his father. But it was Chiksika who was Tecumseh’s first teacher, protector, hero, and friend. And just as Chiksika in childhood had always trailed after his father, and emulated him, and absorbed everything he said, just so Tecumseh did Chiksika. He had long ago decided he would be just like his brother.

Chiksika did not try to shake off his younger brother. It was not just that he liked being the object of such adulation. He enjoyed the child’s voracious curiosity and his untiring vitality. The boy was remarkable. His mind caught and held everything that entered it. He could recite tribal lore word for word after hearing it once, but he liked to hear it over and over so that he could examine it in his mind. And already, at six years, he was the champion among his peers in every sort of hunting or fighting or game-playing skill. With his little hickory bow he could put arrows almost unerringly into any mark. He could outrun many of the ten-year-olds, was a quick, strong, and tricky wrestler, and rode a pony as if he were a part of it. Chiksika, himself acknowledged as one of the most promising young bucks in the sept, saw Tecumseh as even more promising; he was aware always of his
little brother’s destiny signs, and he felt a sacred duty to help guide him along the path to a worthy manhood.

Suddenly now Chiksika raised his head. Someone was running through the woods, coming close. Chiksika tensed and crouched, though no danger was likely this close to the town.

Now they saw the figure coming, flitting through the sunbeams in the deep green woods, naked except for breechcloth and moccasins, muscular and graceful. Chiksika raised his arm and shouted:

“Stands Firm!
Pe-eh-wah,
this way!” The youth veered toward them and trotted up, his silver ear ornamentation jouncing heavily. His usual smile of greeting was not on his face.

“Here you are! Quick! Come to the council lodge. Your father calls for everyone. Great trouble with the Long Knives! They have burned the Wapatomica towns of our people!”

“Burned the towns?”

“Yes! With an army they went up the Muskingum, and burned the towns at the Forks! Hurry!” He turned and sprinted back toward the town, summoning them to follow. Chiksika and Tecumseh plunged into the woods and caught up with him. Chiksika’s blood felt as if it were boiling through his veins; his soul was full of the silent scream of outrage. Could this really be true, that the whitefaces had dared do such a thing?

T
ECUMSEH LISTENED FROM THE EDGE OF THE CROWD AND
felt the anger and excitement of the warriors growing as they were told of the events. As he heard the chiefs of the Wapatomica towns tell of it, he tried to see it in his mind.

It had started when some of the worst sort of Long Knives had tricked some of the followers of Tah-ga-ju-te, a great Mingo chief, and murdered them. The Mingo was a peaceful chief, a friend of both white men and red men. His wife had been a Shawnee woman.

Among the murdered Mingos had been all the members of the chief’s family. The white men had butchered them into pieces. The chief had sworn revenge. He had sworn to take ten scalps for each murdered member of his own family. He had told the white leaders at Fort Pitt that he was not going to wage a general war, and that he would put down the hatchet when he had had retribution. A few of his Shawnee relatives had helped him carry out his vow, and then they had put down their weapons. But the white leaders, in their fear and anger, had then raised an army and attacked six Shawnee towns, burning them and their crops.
Their governor chief in Virginia was now raising a bigger army to come farther into the Shawnee country and burn more Shawnee towns. The army was gathering at Fort Pitt, and there were so many soldiers that the smoke of their cookfires hid the hills and the stink of their dung on the ground could be smelled for a mile. They would probably come next to these towns here on the Peckuwe Plains, including Cornstalk’s Town and Kispoko Town.

And now with this invasion threatening, Cornstalk, main chief of all the Shawnees, was calling for his people to remain at peace with the white men, to appease them, to avoid war against so large an army.

But many of the Shawnees were in a rage about the murders and about the burned towns. They felt that the Long Knives must be stopped now and punished, or they would grow more bold and aggressive.

After the council had gone on for hours, and all had had their say, Hard Striker rose to speak. Tecumseh, proud and excited by the sight of his father standing before the hushed crowd, breathed fast and listened. He was determined to remember his father’s words as he always remembered stories and lessons.

“My brothers, my people,” the chief said, his deep voice rolling over the council ground. “Do you remember that only a few moons ago I went to the Mingo chief and spoke to him about the dangers the white men bring? This I did. But he said he had always been a friend to the white men as well as the red, and that he would not guard himself against them.

“I warned him, but he would not listen, and now he has paid the price. All his family was butchered, and now he sits in bitterness. And the trouble that started in his camp now sweeps toward our own homes.

“Listen! Do you think we will stop this trouble by sitting still and smiling at the whitefaces, as he did? Do the whitefaces build their army of thirty hundred just to come and sit and smile at us and talk friendly talk? Listen! The Mingo was not crushed because he was weak or afraid. He is a strong and brave man. No! He was crushed because he believed in the friendship and the word of the Long Knives.

“You know me. I am a war chief. Long have I warned you that we must stand firm against the whitefaces, and never let them reach onto our land even with the toes of their boots. Many of you have echoed my belief.

“It is bad what the Long Knives have done to the Mingos, and
to the Wapatomica towns. But if these evil acts have blown the mist of foolish trust from our eyes, then this was good. Now with clear sight we see that the whitefaces want to come here and burn our towns and our crops, so our children will be cold and hungry in the coming winter. The Mingo’s trouble was their excuse to come to our side of the river and try to walk on us. Now surely our eyes are clear!

“Listen! The Master of Life would not look upon us as worthy men if we bent to beg at the white man’s feet, for the white man is wrong and we are right. Now the Master of Life calls upon us to do with strength and courage what is our duty to do: to put these white intruders back out of our country! This country was given to our People.

“I ask you, warriors of the Kispoko Shawnees, and all men of other septs who sit among us today, to be brave and righteous! I press for war to resist the Long Knives. When we sit in council with our great chief Cornstalk, I will tell him this, and I hope that I may tell him that all my warriors are with me!
Neweh-canateh-pah Weshemoneto!”

The hundreds of voices of the Kispoko men responded in a roar: “Ho! The Great Good Spirit favors our People!”

Tecumseh had quailed, listening to his father’s words. Now a fearful excitement crowded up in his breast, for though he knew little of war, he was old enough to understand that there would soon be a great disruption of all things he knew.

H
ARD
S
TRIKER WAS SURE THAT HE HAD SWAYED MOST OF HIS
warriors to back him for war in the great council with Cornstalk. But that night his wife was looking at him with narrowed and cunning eyes, and he suddenly realized that his hardest battle of persuasion might still be ahead of him. As his wife, Turtle Mother was the Kispoko women’s chief, and the women’s chief was the peace chief. If the women of the sept decided against war, they had many ways of influencing the men, both in open council and by private persuasion. If Turtle Mother wanted no war against the white men, she could set the women in motion to change the men’s minds. So Hard Striker decided to watch her closely and see which way she was leaning.

When she put the pot of succotash before him and knelt across from him, he shut his eyes and thanked Weshemoneto for the good world he had given them to live in, then prayed to Kokomthena with thanks for the corn and beans she had created. Then he smiled at his wife across the fire and reached with his horn
spoon into the pot. She smiled sweetly back at him and filled her spoon also.

He nibbled some of the corn from the edge of his spoon, saying, “Mmmmm.
Mmmm!”
Chiksika and Star Watcher and Tecumseh filled their spoons and began eating, watching their parents, aware of some wordless tension between them. The triplets were already asleep under a blanket on the bed at the end of the room. Loud Noise had been a good, quiet child for a change that evening, and the household of the chief was calm and pleasant.

“How good this food is,” he said to his wife.

“How good it is to be all together here and in good health, all our family safe,” said Turtle Mother. “May nothing ever harm this family or take any of us from the others.”

Hard Striker stopped chewing for a moment, then resumed. He knew what she meant by that. He swallowed and said:

“May no bad people ever drive us from this bountiful and sacred land.”

Turtle Mother stopped chewing for a moment, then resumed. She knew what he meant by that. She swallowed and said:

“May we have peace. For, as our great chief Cornstalk has told us, if we anger bad men, they will bring armies into this bountiful and sacred land, and make us suffer.”

Hard Striker’s eyes flashed. But then he smiled at her again and blew on his succotash to cool it. He said, “If a child kicked this pot of food into the fire, and then did excrement in your bed, and you petted him and asked him to be nicer, do you think he would be nicer, and do that no more?”

“Mat-tah,
no,” she said.

“The Long Knives,” he said, “have done that to the Wapatomica towns. If we go to them at a treaty and pet them and ask them to be nicer, they will smile behind their hands to each other and then come into this valley to throw our food in the fire and do excrement on the graves of our ancestors. My wife, they must be punished for what they did, and stopped from coming here. The whitefaces must bleed now in the east, or we will bleed and weep all the way to the sunset.”

Tecumseh shivered at what these quiet words made him see in his mind. He could remember, as in a dream memory, red blood on white skin. He did not realize that his father and mother were arguing. He presumed that they were always of one mind. Chiksika and Star Watcher knew they were arguing and refrained from saying anything.

Turtle Mother’s face was now like a mask. But through her
glittering eyes Star Watcher could see anger and fear and doubt and resolve all marching back and forth in her soul.

Turtle Mother finished the meal in this tense silence and said nothing while cleaning up afterward. Without a word she scoured the cookpot with sand. And then in the feeble light of the fire she worked for a long time with awl and sinew to repair a moccasin. She was thinking hard. Most of the times when Hard Striker glanced through his pipe smoke at her, her face looked so defiant that he was sure she was preparing her peace speech for the women. He worried and grew irritated by turns but did not try to talk with her again about it, because he thought it would work out better if she thought than if she stiffened in argument.

It was not until the next morning that he knew. Before full daylight he opened his eyes and saw that she was up on her elbow looking at his face in the gloom. Her naked body was warm against his side, and her musk was strong in his nostrils.

She said softly, “You tell me that you will punish the Long Knives. You do not say that
they
might win. If they were to win, killing many of our young men, then they would surely come on here to punish our People. And that would be even worse than asking them for peace.”