The Drums of Change (5 page)
The second report arrived a short two weeks after the first had been received.
Dear Christian Brothers,
After several trips out into the country round about, I still am uncertain as to where I am to begin my work. The Indian people are, for the most part, quite open and accepting. I have felt no hostility. In fact they have been courteous and hospitable. On several occasions I have been invited to share a meal and even a tent. For this I thank the Lord, and I thank you for your prayers.
There are some concerns. As you know, the whiskey traders caused much trouble in the area a few years back. Thank God, due to the North West Mounted Police, that problem has now been dealt with. But the aftereffects have remained. Many of the Indian people have discovered strong drink to be to their liking and seek ways to get the bootleg whiskey from other sources. This is of great concern to the North West Mounted Police force, as it is to us all. Many have succumbed to the ill effects of the illegal liquor. In one winter alone, seventy members of the noble Bloods, a division of the Blackfoots, were killed in drunken quarrels at just one of the posts. Others, poisoned by the evil brew, were frozen to death while intoxicated or shot over altercations caused by the evil trade.
Although the trading centers that promoted the transactions in illegal whiskey have been cleaned up, I fear that the effects will be with the people for years to come.
There is also much concern regarding diseases that have come to the area with the white man. In 1837–38, two thirds of the Blackfoot Nation was wiped out in a smallpox epidemic. Since that time many others have died from various diseases, though never to that great extent again. But each year more lives are lost. We have no way to bring medicines or treatment to the people. It causes me much grief to hear of the great losses. It is little wonder that some of the chiefs are concerned regarding the great influx of settlers and trades people. Please pray that the door will not be closed even before we have a chance to influence them for Christ. Already rumblings are reaching us from south of the border, and we feel that the Canadian tribes might be greatly influenced by the unrest.
I do covet your earnest prayers.
In His service,
Martin D. Forbes,
Minister of Christ
Running Fawn awoke to the beating of the drums. There was something different about the rhythm. Something strange about the intensity. Something challenging in the tone of the voices that offered the chants. She shivered in her blankets, even though the night was still warm. She stirred and moved to crowd closer to Little Brook. But the shared pallet was empty of her sister. She was alone. She called out softly in the darkness, seeking some assurance from her mother. There was no answer to her cry.
Frightened, she pushed the blanket aside and crawled across the hard dirt floor on all fours. She felt her mother’s bed. There was no one there. Heart pounding, she crawled the rest of the way to the opening of the tent and pushed back the heavy flap. In the sky she could see the reflection of the fire. It was larger than a cooking fire would be. Even brighter than the usual communal fire. She could hear the drums plainly now, and the earth beneath her reverberated with the beating of many feet against the hard-packed ground. The voices rose and fell with a strange eeriness that made her spine tingle and her hair pull at the base of her neck. She wanted to crawl back into her blankets and bury her head, but she could not bear to be alone.
She ran the short distance toward the fire, her heart pounding even harder within her chest. An enormous group of people spilled out over the prairie. She had never seen such a large gathering all in one place. Even the women, sitting on the sidelines with blankets wrapped around their shoulders, sang and swayed as the drums beat and the men danced and the feet continued to thump thump thump against the trembling ground.
Running Fawn looked around the gathering with wild eyes. She would never find her mother in such a press of people.
And then she spotted Little Brook and some of the fear left her. At least her sister was there. Her sister would know where their mother was.
Running Fawn pushed through the cluster of young girls until she was able to reach out and tug at Little Brook’s long shawl.
“Where is Mother?” she questioned loudly. The thundering of the drums made it hard to be heard.
Little Brook turned. Her eyes widened as they acknowledged her younger sister, but it was clear she had not heard the girl’s words.
“Where is Mother?” Running Fawn shouted again, fear making her voice break.
Little Brook just gave a careless shrug of her shoulders and waved a hand toward a large group of women.
Running Fawn’s heart again thudded with fear. She would never find her. Never. Not in the tangle of swaying bodies and waving shawls. With a look of despair she pushed herself forward until she was close to Little Brook’s side and stubbornly took her position. She reached out one small hand and gathered folds of Little Brook’s shawl in a tightened fist, determined to hang on despite whatever came. She would not find herself alone again.
“What happened?” she asked Little Brook, with a sharp tug at the shawl.
Little Brook’s eyes were shining with excitement, reflected by the bright full moon overhead.
“The chiefs have spoken,” she said hoarsely.
“What? What have they spoken?”
“They are going to the White Fort. They are in agreement. They wish to stop the many white men from coming to our land.”
Running Fawn let the breath ease from her body. Some of the tension began to seep away from her. Her small shoulders drooped in relieved acceptance. There was nothing wrong. The chiefs were taking care of the people. They were restoring their world to what it had always been. From now on she would not need to feel terror at the change any longer.
Running Fawn was feeling impatient. It seemed long past time for the large camp to break up and for the bands to go their separate ways. But the people appeared reluctant to leave the massive campsite. Night after night the drums beat out their song of unity, yet with its underlying note of discord. Daily the talk around the campfire centered on the interests of the people. The delegation had been dispatched to speak with the Great White Fathers, who gave them audience and expressed some appreciation for their concerns. But no real solution was evident.
“The Great White Mother, the Queen of England, cares for her people,” the delegation was assured. The words were brought back to the camp to be deliberated and measured and debated. Some found comfort, others doubted.
Around the campfires and in the Sweat Lodges, the word “treaty” was often heard. Running Fawn had no idea what the word meant. She did know that it brought various responses. Her father spoke against the idea. After all, the brothers across the border had signed a treaty in 1855. The white man had not honored the treaty but had broken it over and over again. What good would a treaty do the people?
Their own band’s chief, Calls Through The Night, was also against the idea of signing a treaty. It would only bring more white settlers to the area and more renegade Indians who would infringe upon their hunting grounds, further deplete the buffalo, and make raids on their herds of horses.
But the great chief of the whole Blackfoot tribe, Chief Crowfoot, was not ready to condemn the idea of signing. He had visited the great fort on the open plains and had seen firsthand the large contingent of white soldiers, all carrying weapons of war. He knew that his people would never be able to stand against them. Wisdom of years and experience told him that it would be better to sign than to condemn his people to certain death.
Running Fawn felt confused and unsettled by the talk. The uncertainty. She longed to return to the safety of their own hills.
Eventually small bands began to separate themselves from the main body and ride off to make their own camps where the hunting grounds would not need to be shared with such a large body of people.
But when the time came that Calls Through The Night decided his little band would leave the gathering, they did not head for the familiar hills closer to the mountains. He had decided to stay in a sheltered valley along the Bow River not many miles upstream from the large camp. Running Fawn was disappointed and frightened by this decision. Why did he wish to remain on the open plain? Why had they not moved back toward the western hills and her favorite place in the whole world? Surely there was some mistake.
But her small voice would not be heard against the loud voices of the elders, she knew that. So she buried her thoughts and fears and stayed as close to her mother’s campfire as she was able.
They had not been at the new camp for long when they had a visitor. The man was a member of the Blood tribe, a part of the Blackfoot Nation. Running Fawn watched him arrive and be properly received by Chief Calls Through The Night. The two disappeared into the chief’s tent, and soon other elders were gathering around the chief’s fire.
Word drifted from the very folds of the tent skins and was soon being whispered around campfires by women bending over their cooking pots.
There was to be an uprising. The great Chief Sitting Bull to the south was tired of the broken promises and the intrusion of settlers and soldiers. He was going to settle the issue of land once and for all and was asking his brothers north of the border to join him. The invitation had been delivered to Chief Crowfoot. He was to make a decision. How many chiefs would join him if he chose to go?
Long into the night the council fires burned. In the early morning light many of the elders mounted their horses and followed Chief Calls Through The Night out of the camp in the company of the Blood warrior.
Running Fawn had never felt so frightened. Among the men who rode off at the first light of dawn was her father. She knew little of uprisings, nothing of treaties, but she did know of wars and raids. There were always horses that returned with no riders. There was always much weeping and wailing within the camp as the women mourned their dead, and there was always loud beating of the drums and display of weapons and bravado as the braves voiced their intent for revenge.
The tension in the camp grew as the days slowly passed. Running Fawn could feel it. Could hear it in the muted voices. Could sense it in the tightness of her mother’s jaw as she worked at the scraping of the buffalo hides.
“When will he be back?” she dared to ask one day.
She did not speak her father’s name, but she knew her mother would understand her meaning.
“When he is finished,” her mother responded and turned her eyes back to the skin.
Running Fawn saw how tense her mother was, could see it in the movement of her brown hands.
She had to ask. Had to know. “Will it take long—to drive away the Whites?”
“Perhaps,” said her mother.
“Why did they come?”
“Because what we have is good.”
Running Fawn let her eyes drift over the wide open prairie with its wind-browned grasses and its distant hills, smoky blue in the gathering twilight. She longed for the far-off mountains, too far away to even be seen, yet inwardly she could hear their call, sense their presence. Yes. What they had was good. No wonder the pale-faced people wanted to take it from them.
She hoped her father and the other brave warriors of her people would be able to stop them—soon.