A Sweetness to the Soul (24 page)

I looked, even though I wasn’t sure of the bundle’s appearance. At least I felt useful, something I hadn’t felt since arriving three days earlier. I’d never been to an Indian wedding before and knew myself both privileged and nervous at the same time, wanting not to make mistakes and yet to take in every beaded detail of the day.

“I can be persuaded,” Bubbles said, tapping her forefinger beside her cheek, “to remember.…” She closed her eyes, earning time to think and I noted idly as I watched her that Bubble’s eyes were the shape of her hide scraper, arched at the top, round at the bottoms.

“Oh, hayah!” Morning Dove said. “You will just fall asleep.” Irritated, she advised, “If you brought everything I told you, then go look outside. See if it has been set in with the baskets of food out there by mistake.”

She watched Bubbles ease her way through the narrow opening into the sunlight, the hide door catching briefly on Bubble’s beaded roses that kept the ends of her braids in place. Dust glittered in the ray of sunshine that pierced the lodge when Bubbles left.

“Who could have known this day would come so quickly!” Morning Dove said to me—or no one in particular—anticipation and loss joined in her voice. She clutched at the necklace she wore,
rubbing the tiny seed beads beneath her fingers as she thought. Then with her hands she directed my searching again, motioned me to look here then there, beneath the stacks of buckskins, fur hides, trade beads, dried fruit and meats, talking as we turned up and inside out, looking for the small
shaptákai
that held the precious veil.

Morning Dove buried her head in a basket, searching. “When Sunmiet was born,” she told us, remembering, “we accepted the gift of Standing Tall’s parents and their request to join our daughter to their son. We used the time until the full moon to consider, invite them back to share a meal and give our answer.” She shook her head in amazement. “The day of our promise disappeared like the moon behind the clouds. We knew it was certain to be there, but hidden from our vision just the same. Until now.”

“I am glad you waited,” Sunmiet said, speaking for the first time since the search for the bundle began. She stood in the shadow of the lodge, dressed in white buckskins from head to toe, the deer’s tail still attached to the hide at the hem as was the wedding custom. She was as beautiful as any bride I had ever seen. ’Course, I’d not seen many by that age and never an Indian bride. Sunmiet had told me that each detail of her regalia had been carefully thought out and planned over the years, just for this day. From the tiny red and blue seed beads sewn into her moccasins to the matching design on her leggings to her beaded belt and bag worn at the back of her waist. Even her wrist bracelets and the ermine woven into her braids that eased over her breasts, just whispering to the dirt floor, each detail spoke of care and respect, family and tradition. The entire bodice of her dress had been beaded by her mother with beads she’d traded bags and buckskins for over the years.

Sunmiet cooled herself with her eagle feather fan. Her cheeks were as flushed and soft as a baby’s bottom as she said quietly, eyelashes fluttering, “I’m glad you permitted me one more summer, even though my flow began last fall.” Her voice was tremulous, shaky with gratitude and a bit of fear.

“We could be laughing, remembering all this commotion for a whole year already instead of searching, searching, readying ourselves for this wedding yet to come,” her Auntie Magpie said.

But Morning Dove heard the fear in her daughter’s voice, stopped her frantic search and came to her. As she spoke, she touched Sunmiet’s cheek flushed with emotion. “We thought you were too young,” Morning Dove said, her fingers tracing her daughter’s fine cheekbone to her chin. “And you are our only daughter.” She brushed some wispy tendrils of hair that stuck, damp, to Sunmiet’s temples, weaving them with her fingertips back into Sunmiet’s braids. “And your father reins in his views with the skill of the good horseman he is. So it was not so difficult to persuade the family of your husband-to-be to wait one more year.”

She turned her daughter around, checked the necklace of porcupine quills she wore at her throat, adjusted the braids parted at her daughter’s neck. Her fingers, callused from the years of joining beads to buckskin gently touched Sunmiet’s skin. “Your father did not wish the boarding school pain on you. But you will understand the non-Indian ways better, for the good of your children’s children.”

“Standing Tall did not wish it,” Sunmiet said, facing her mother again, searching her eyes.

“No. He took issue.”

Magpie interrupted, believing they wished to know her thoughts. “He thinks you pay him back, for his foolish visit in the snow that cost you big time at the school,” she said, remembering.

“Sunmiet does not have venom,” Morning Dove told her sister. “And Standing Tall is a good son. We made a wise decision those years ago choosing him for you.” Morning Dove stood back, surveying as she spoke. “He is a good hunter. Good fisherman. He listens to his mother and his
kása.”
I wondered if Sunmiet had told them of her fears about him or if she would let them only see his good side. “He will provide for you and his family,” Morning Dove finished, straightening something on Sunmiet’s dress. “So he had to wait.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It is not the first time.”

“Nor the last,” Auntie Lilie said and giggled.

The long fringe on Sunmiet’s buckskin dress flowed like water as she moved her arms to straighten her beaded belt, ignoring her auntie. Her mother stepped closer, held both her daughter’s hands out before her, admiring the gentle drape of the hide over her daughter’s slender frame, the tiny stitches and network of beads, the elk’s teeth and shells that decorated the bodice. Many calluses had been grown for this moment.

“You are a good berry picker,” Morning Dove told her daughter. “And a good root digger. Only a good root digger receives a
kápn
from both her mother and her
kása
, is that not right?” Sunmiet lowered her eyes in embarrassment at her mother’s high praise. “Perhaps someday you will be one of the seven to dig first roots. You
will
be a good mother,” she said, lifting her daughter’s chin. “You
will
bring joy to your husband’s bed and his family’s fire and pride to our hearts for what you will do for your family. You will bring us roots in our old age and we will not go hungry.” She reached her hand behind her daughter’s head and touched her gently. “You are beautiful on your day. Your husband will forget he was asked to wait, he will be so pleased to see you. It will be as it should be,” she said, with finality.

“If only we can find that bundle,” Auntie Magpie sang out, spoiling the moment, beginning to rustle about once again.

The music seemed louder now and Kása, entering, had to speak more loudly over it. “What holds it up, then?” Kása said, puffing. She trundled into the dressing area bearing a huge basket before her like a last-minute pregnancy. With a grunt, she delivered the basket to the dirt floor revealing her skinny body dressed in a freshly tanned hide, covered with beads. Deep lines like rivers flowed down either side of the island of her mouth. She looked upset. But I had begun to understand that Kása always looked upset.

“We’re looking for the bundle with Sunmiet’s veil,” Bubbles said lazily, coming in behind her, as though there was no hurry. “Do you have it?”

Kása looked briefly at the chubby girl she claimed as granddaughter, scowled. “Who would trust you with something so precious?” she said, looking into her woven basket filled to overflowing with stacks of homemade gifts of bags, smaller baskets, food utensils, and supplies. She shook her head. Three younger girls poured through the opening carrying baskets as well, filling the already cluttered space with women and woven things. Kása scanned the bounty of their baskets. They too were filled only with the gifts for the wedding dinner.

“You should have taken care of it yourself,” Kása told her daughter.

The drumming music increased its pace.

“It is not here, then,” Morning Dove said, her voice holding a mixture of regret and alarm. Then deciding said, “We must find another way. Let me think on it.”

Kása, Morning Dove’s auntie, clucked at her the way Morning Dove sometimes did her own daughter. “What way is there? The drums beat faster. There’s no time now. She will have to marry without it.” She shook her head. “It will be a stain.”

Morning Dove ignored her. “It should look like purifying water cascading over her head, covering the part in her hair, her eyes and face, down to her throat, until she is joined.…” She was thoughtful, stepping over Kása’s negative view that nothing could be done. She scanned the baskets, seeking a solution. Something of what Morning Dove said triggered my memory and my eyes roamed the room looking for a particular basket I’d noticed during the search.

The drumming grew more forceful, the wedding singers’ voices more piercing in the August air.

Finding it, I reached into a bundle of buckskin laces, inhaling the smoky fragrance and pulled out a mass of fine sinew threads and thin, feathery light, white buckskin lengths. “Can we use these?” I said, holding them cascading over my fingers. “Tie knots along each length, to look like beads of water, string some wild grapes—”

“And antler beads. And dentilium. Yes! I saw them somewhere,”
Morning Dove said, excited now. “Quickly. Bubbles, Auntie,” she said, directing, “you and Huckleberry Eyes take these and tie the knots. Leave space for beads and berries we will tie with sinew. You,” she spoke to the younger girls, “go bring two handfuls of plump grapes. But almost dried so they will not stain,” she called out to them as they scurried out the door. “Quickly! Quickly.”

“It will not work,” Kása said, dropping her bird-like bones onto a pile of blankets off to the side. She adjusted her colorful kerchief, wiggled her bottom into the blankets before resting her scowl on me.

Morning Dove pulled the beaded necklace she wore off over her head. “We will use this too,” she added tenderly fingering the intricate design of the white bird beaded onto a brilliant blue circle of sparkling cut beads. “With a branch of red willow around this.” She set the perfect circle on her daughter’s head. “From which we’ll hang the laces and the beads.” Her lips pursed in approval. “I will ask your father to get the willow, now,” she told Sunmiet. “We will make your own veil, from the things of this place and your life, made with your family and your friends.” She looked at me before she slipped out the doorway, “It will be a new tradition, from both Indian and non.”

Sunmiet’s veil was exquisite, even if it was conceived in part by a non-Indian. Having never seen what one should look like, I truly enjoyed the finished product put together by the women those last minutes before the ceremony. Our fingers worked in eel speed and just as smoothly until Morning Dove placed the beaded work on her daughter’s head and led her out to her husband-to-be.

The two were married, then, at He-He, “laughing,” there beside the Warm Springs River that bubbles out of the mountain called Jefferson. Standing Tall looked as a grown man with his breastplate covering his dark chest and his beaded arm bands accenting his strength. He wore new buckskin leggings and soft moccasins. I noticed he raised his eyebrows in question as he looked at Sunmiet’s veil. We heard some chattering behind fingertips from the wedding guests.

Then Standing Tall smiled at his bride, held her hands gently as
she smiled back. They stood that way, as though none of us were even in their presence while the elders sang the prayers and spoke the words over them that would join them forever. It seemed to me Sunmiet had come to some peace about him for she had never looked happier.

Just as the words ended, Sunmiet’s parents and Standing Tall’s parents came forward carrying a Hudson Bay blanket. Standing behind the couple, they wrapped the blanket around their shoulders, swaddling them together as though babies ready for their cradleboards. There was much laughing and giggling and more words were spoken in their language, and only later did I learn that their families had truly joined them together with the blanket embrace.

The wedding exchange had already taken place, a few weeks before. One beaded bag made by Sunmiet’s family equal to three Hudson Bay blankets brought by the family of Standing Tall. Sunmiet’s family offered many gifts made by their own hands. Tanned hides, baskets, beaded bags, dried fruit and salmon to better furnish the cooking place of Standing Tall’s mother. His family offered store-bought goods, from Muller’s store or the agency, as was the custom. Blankets and calico and tools and things purchased with the trade-goods of Standing Tall’s family and dried venison, to show that he could provide.

After the exchange, dozens of guests had sat as they did now, on willow mats, to eat salmon, venison,
piaxi, lukws
, wild celery, and finally huckleberries, in that order, the way Sunmiet’s people believe the Creator gave them the food. We began and ended with
chuush
, “water,” always with the life-giving water.

Morning Dove had cooked for days with her family to prepare the meals, grateful to be higher in the mountains where the nights were cool when wearing buckskins brought unwanted perspiration. Sunmiet’s younger cousins, both boys and girls, served the food and everyone ate until they were full.

Many people, more than those I’d spent time with at the river, sat around the circle on the mats, eating. “Sahaptin-speaking Warm
Springs people and more Wascos, tribes put together by the treaty whether they wished it or not,” Koosh told me handing me a bowl of steaming
piaxi
that reminded me of potatoes. “They thought we would kill each other off. We have fooled them and we get along, in our way.”

On the other side of me sat George “Washington” Peters, explaining, pronouncing. A quiet boy, he and Sunmiet had ridden three days before to fetch me. George had said almost nothing during the long ride from Fifteen Mile Crossing to the reservation letting Sunmiet talk about family history inspired by a view of Mutton Mountains or the river. But during the ceremony and after, at the dinner and the pow wow, it was George who seemed to know before I even asked what I might be wondering about. Like the change in music, the meaning of the songs, how the dancers competed with the drummers, anticipating the final beat that to my untrained ears seemed abrupt, unplanned. He talked about “old ways.”