Nakoa's Woman (6 page)

“When do I have to marry Nakoa?” Maria asked.

“You no want marriage with Nakoa?”

“Certainly not. I want my freedom. I want to live with my own people. How could I live the rest of my life in an Indian village?” Maria’s voice shook. She thought of this woman at Fort Laramie and she pictured the lonely Laramie hills and heard the birds calling again from the ruins outside its gate. The thought of Ana and her father made tears spring to her eyes and she rocked back and forth in pain. “Help me! Help me!” she whispered.

“Not bad for you now,” the old woman said happily. “Get bad when Nakoa give you away!”

“What do you mean?”

“You think Nakoa save you to have as pretty wife?”

“Yes. Don’t I have to marry him?”

The old woman threw back her head and laughed. All mirth was gone from her face and her expression was one of mockery. “Little white virgin no use brain! Do you know Nakoa the most important man in this village? Nakoa son of head chief. Nakoa head of the Mutsik, greatest society of Pikuni braves. Now you think Indian man like this would marry a white woman?”

Maria bowed her head.

“He screw pale woman for a while and then sell you for a horse! How you be such a fool! Screw one thing marry another! To marry you—insult to his father, to the Mutsik—to the Pikuni—to me!” The old woman was screaming with rage. “You nothing but—white woman! White woman!” When Maria looked up the old woman spat into her face.

Woodenly, Maria wiped the spittle away. “He will sell me?”

“Siksikai next. Already ask at council of head chiefs.”

“Who is Siksikai?”

“He rode from Snake land with you. You saw him asking for you last night.” Her face was gloating.

Maria shuddered at her expression. “What is wrong with Siksikai?”

“He hurt women, all women he take to his couch. Maybe he not like you and trade you off quick!”

Maria hid her face in her hands. She thought of the tender way the Indian had kissed her outside of the village, of how he had not raped her. “Nakoa—” she whispered.

“Nakoa can’t help you even if he wanted to keep you. He pledged to marry Nitanna this summer in sacred ceremony between the Kainah and the Pikuni. Would Nitanna want white woman around? Siksikai no have woman. No Pikuni woman go near him. That is why he want you.”

“You are animals!”

“All men animal! White man animal with Indian woman—Indian animal with white woman. All men have sticks, little white virgin.”

“I am no whore.”

“But soon to be. Then two whores in Pikuni village—you and me. Nice old Indian whore and nice white whore!”

Maria leaned back against the skins of the lodge, sick. She clutched at her stomach. The image of the Pikuni head chief came suddenly to her mind.

“What is your sun chief called?” she asked.

“Natosin. You think you get to sleep with him, too?”

Maria closed her eyes. Natosin had had an innate dignity, a face of wisdom and of compassion. She would go to him for help.

Maria walked away from the old woman’s lodge with her heart hammering in her throat. Atsitsi had not restrained her, or even bothered to ask where she was going. Maria walked by tipi after tipi. They all looked the same, with the blackened area painted at the top and black bands at the bottom broken by two rows of white circles and an upper row of triangles.

Two braves passed her, secretly looking at her, and she shuddered. God, she might be used by both of them, or any man around her if he could afford the price! She ached for Anson Frederich to come and save her, for her father to come and save her. But there was no one to help her but herself, and she wondered how long her strength would allow her to live.

A dog rushed at her, tearing at her skirts, until a woman working a skin called him back. The noon sun shone down upon her relentlessly. The bodice of her dress became drenched with perspiration; her hair hung damply to her neck and still she walked grimly on, the inner circle of tipis appearing just as far away as ever. More riders passed her, but so feverishly was she seeking the inner lodges, she did not see the look of amazement upon their faces. She saw a little girl peer at her shyly from the interior of a lodge and her heart pained with envy. If she could be a child in that cool shadow and lie down to afternoon sleeping with life kind and comforting all around her! If only she were a child—if only they had never heard of the Oregon Trail!

Not once did Maria think of the uselessness of her actions. If she could find Natosin, what would she tell him? How could she speak to him? Even if she could speak his tongue, who was she to thwart the wishes of his son and the decision of the high chiefs? But her mind churned with fierce rebellion only.

She remembered the way she had embraced the Indian outside the village. She thought of the soft lines of his mouth when he saw her pain or fear; she remembered the tenderness that could come to his eyes. When she had slept by him in the sunlight and had kissed him under the stars, a strength had come from him that made pain bearable. The clean buckskin smell of him, the scents of the warming prairie with its carpets of bright wildflowers, the smell of the mountain pines in the wind—all of these had seemed a new atmosphere in which she could live and grow. But she had been reaching toward nothing; how she hated her foolish mind and her unclean flesh for yearning for something that never was!

At last she reached the inner circle of tipis. There were nine of them, with all of their doors facing east. They were different from the lodges of the outer circle. They had the same black border at their base and top, but between these borders were designs in brilliant colors.

Maria looked around her, seeking someone to speak to. A woman came out of one of the lodges, and seeing Maria, stopped in her tracks in amazement. She hastily retreated, even lowering the flap of her tipi. Maria wondered if she had done something terribly wrong in coming to these lodges. Now moving cautiously, she walked slowly toward the council lodge. Two women came out of another tipi and silently watched her. Their faces, too, reflected surprise.

The council lodge was empty, so she had to seek the tipi of Natosin, for surely it was here in the inner circle. She passed a tipi with its skins decorated with a yellow cross, another painted with the figure of a black buffalo. A young girl sat by its door, quilling moccasins. She looked up at Maria with large frightened eyes. “
Weekw?”
she asked softly.

“I am seeking the lodge of Natosin,” Maria answered, using the Indian tongue she had learned and the sign language too.

The girl immediately pointed to a tipi decorated with an eagle which stood across from them.

“Thank you,” Maria said in Pikuni, and walked toward it. It was the most beautiful of the inner lodges. Its whole top was a brilliant red with yellow bands below it in varying hues, and it looked as if the eagle flew against a sunset sky.

Maria’s hands grew cold and she began to tremble. Dear God, what had she done? She approached the lodge, and then timidly walked away from it and stood by another decorated with a beautiful blue star. She could hear male voices coming from Natosin’s and then the sound of pleasant laughter. The young girl and the two women were staring at her but she had gone too far now to turn back. She went to Natosin’s lodge and boldly drew aside the doorflap.

“Nakaa-lo!”
her captor exclaimed in surprise and immediately came to her side. His forehead was creased in anger, and he began to shake her shoulders.

Directly in front of her, opposite the door, sat Natosin. Maria called his name, struggling to get to him. Nakoa held her back.
“Keleoene
—” he said furiously. Maria suddenly stopped fighting him and looked up into his face. Here was the man who had kissed her tenderly and soon would trade her for a horse.

“
Weekw?”
he asked her now, more quietly. What is it?

“What is it indeed,” Maria answered in English. “Why, you have found yourself a wonderful little whore!” With these words she raked his face as deeply as she could with her fingernails. She watched his blood follow her imprint and heard excited exclamations of amazement. “Liar!” she screamed at him.

He did not even touch his face and no longer showed signs of anger. He gestured to two men in the lodge.
“Mahto hahxim!’
he said softly, and the two Indians forced her from the tipi.

Outside Maria struggled and screamed again for Natosin and was in such a frenzy that she was dragged like a madwoman through the village. “Help!” she cried hysterically. Dogs became wild; children shouted with her and followed the sad spectacle; men and women left their lodges and watched her silently.

Nearing Atsitsi’s, Maria quieted. She was released at her door and Maria ran into the tipi, throwing herself down upon her couch and sobbing as if she never intended to stop.

Atsitsi was eating and looked at Maria sourly. “All by-God noises ruin good food,” she said. “Why not eat and shut up?”

Maria pounded the buffalo robe with her fists.

“Animal already die once. You mad robe no cry with you?”

Maria turned her head to the wall. She would die. She would hold her breath or starve until she died.

“Oh, we all sad. Robe sad, walls sad, stew sad. All cry for baby white woman. I cry later when stomach full.”

“Shut up!” Maria screamed.

“Just tell big sadness of everything. You cry little self away, nothing left to wash at river! Nothing left to keep virgin!”

The afternoon sun moved slowly. Flies buzzed against the lodge skins. Maria kept her head to the wall. In time the lodge skins darkened and the smell of food cooking upon the evening fires grew stronger. Her stomach began to cramp. With her soul still twisted in pain, the will of the flesh triumphed and Maria left the lodge for food.

Chapter Six

Two days passed. Maria knew that the village was talking of the way she had scratched Nakoa’s face, and she was glad. No matter how much she had hurt herself, she had shamed Nakoa more.

Toward Atsitsi she maintained a stony silence. The old woman raged at this. “Now why you no talk? You think sweet words too good for Indian tipi? You filled with yourself twice! Big mess! Why not Nakoa take you to his by-damn lodge? Why leave you here to eat up all my food?”

Atsitsi in fact was trying to eat all of the stew herself. She had eaten four bowls of food and was going for another. “Man fool!” she said, sucking at the meat noisily. “What good it be for man to go through Sun Dance, kill for coups when just become crazy before titty of white woman?”

Maria looked at her in contempt. Atsitsi belched loudly and scratched between her thighs.

“You are like a dog,” Maria said furiously. “You draw every fly upon the prairie!”

“At least I don’t wash self all time like body one big disease! Ha! Wash hands! Wash face! Wash hair! Fool!” She scratched again.

“You don’t mind if I have a little food?” Maria asked wrathfully, filling her bowl. When she had filled it, Atsitsi kicked all of its contents upon the floor. “Well, that was nice!” Maria said.

“You no need meat. Go and eat petal of prairie flower! Or no eat and go quick to white man’s sweet heaven!”

But Maria did eat, and afterward they walked to the river for water and wood. “Now water in paunch for drink!” Atsitsi said “Not for sweet little hands and face! And stay close; Nakoa say you to stay in my sight.”

“I’m walking out of smelling range. At least out on the prairie I can breathe fresh air!”

When they came to the river, groups of women were already bathing in it. Maria found that with the unhappy exception of Atsitsi, the Blackfoot women were very clean. They washed in the river or the lake every day; their clothing, nails, and hair were always well groomed. Maria bathed and sunned herself as far from Atsitsi as she could get, lazily watching the many women around her. They laughed and talked softly as they swam and gathered their scrub wood and water paunches. Their faces glowed with good health and the recent touch of the cool water. They neatly slicked and braided their hair, some touching the part with vermilion. Most were tall and slender, moving with a lean muscular grace. Their dresses were of the soft skins of elk, deer, or antelope, their skirts coming about halfway down their legs, with leggings as high as the knee. Their blouses had short wide sleeves, fringed at the elbow, the hems and sleeves alike decorated with brightly colored quills. Beautiful pendants were worn as earrings, and shining white elk teeth as necklaces. All of the women wore knife cords that hung from their belt to the length of their thigh.

Now none of them bothered to look at Maria. It seemed as if no one desired to interfere with what Nakoa had elected to do with a captured white woman.

“Well, leave now!” Atsitsi shouted across the moving water to Maria. “Go back to lodge! Water like you, never shut up!” she finished in sarcasm. Maria reluctantly approached her, shaking her still wet hair in the sun. “Fires of evil in hair,” Atsitsi observed. “Much red.” She looked deeply depressed. “Body—face—all nice.” Suddenly she brightened. “Nitanna better. Nitanna more beautiful.”

“Tell me of Nitanna.”

“Nakoa’s woman. Most beautiful woman in Blackfoot nation. White woman nothing by Nitanna! Nakoa love Nitanna and marry her in moon of Sun Dance. She come with Kainah then. She daughter of Kainah head chief.”

“How nice for both of them.”

“Not nice for you. Then you go to Siksikai.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“By damn—there Anatsa!” Atsitsi had picked up the water paunches and now she quickly put them down. “I no want to go now. I not see Anatsa for long time and now I look.” She was staring at the young girl who had started to bathe by herself in a quiet and secluded cove of the river.

“What are you staring at?” Maria asked crossly.

The girl in the cove left the water and for a moment revealed herself to them. She was piteously frail and thin.

“See?” said Atsitsi.

“See what?” Maria asked impatiently.

“No woman! No titty! Nothing!”

“You old fool. She is just thin. Look, she is putting on her dress. Now, can we go?”

“See closer. Wait until she pass.” Atsitsi settled her great hulk and waited for the Indian girl to walk by.

“Do you want to carry the wood back or the water?” Maria asked her.

“Paunches. They don’t scratch.”

“Where do the men bathe?” Maria asked.

“Here. In afternoon. You want to hide in bush to peep at Nakoa?”

“Please! Be quiet!” Maria said sharply.

The Indian girl had finished dressing, and after gathering some scrub wood, walked toward them with great difficulty.

“Why, she’s crippled!” breathed Maria.

“Ugly. Always ugly like that!”

“Being crippled isn’t ugly.”

“Leg dragging like that damned ugly.”

“Why don’t the others wait for her?” asked Maria.

“Hurry back to husbands after bathing. Sleep together in afternoon.”

“She has no husband?”

“Now who screw that?”

Maria shuddered at her cruelty.

The girl reached them, and as she passed, Maria gave her a warm and friendly smile. She smiled shyly back and Maria saw with surprise that this was the same girl who had directed her to Natosin’s lodge.

“See what mess,” Atsitsi hissed. “Own brother-in-law won’t sleep with her.”

“You have no heart, do you? Don’t you know she suffers for what she is?”

“Better she suffer than Atsitsi. Still big mess.”

Furious with the old woman, Maria began to gather the scrub wood. “Why don’t you help me?” she asked Atsitsi impatiently.

“You carry wood. You gather wood.” She reached for the paunches that Maria had filled. “Now why so much by-damn water? Can’t leave any for poor river?”

“Don’t spill any on yourself,” Maria answered. “You will die.” Carrying the wood, Maria walked rapidly toward the village.

“Wait for me, by damn!” Atsitsi shouted.

“Move your by-damn feet!” Maria shouted back. Ahead of them, the crippled girl was nearing the village. Two men rode out to meet her and while they were talking to her, Maria could see that she kept her face shyly averted.

Maria’s heart went out to this Indian girl, Anatsa. They were both in an alien world in which there was no compassion for either of them. The two men were now riding toward her and Atsitsi. It was her captor and his friend. Nakoa glanced at her only briefly and then rode on to Atsitsi. The old woman put down the paunches and bared her gums in a grin. Nakoa spoke to her and she began to scratch in delight. She suddenly stopped scratching and looked at Nakoa in astonishment. Nakoa and his friend rode toward the river, and Atsitsi stared after them.

Maria walked back to her. “What is the matter?” she asked. “Did he ask you to marry him?”

Atsitsi kicked over one of the water paunches. She was going to kick over the other paunch, but Maria shoved her away from it.

“Leave that water alone!” Maria said. “That one is mine!”

“God damn!” Atsitsi screamed.

“What is the matter with you? What did he tell you?”

“He say you to stay with me until I teach you Pikuni! You no learn—you no eat! Now why this? He crazy! Why you have to learn Pikuni? You screw in Pikuni? You make baby with Pikuni words? What Pikuni have to do with white woman?” Atsitsi turned and looked mournfully after Nakoa.

Anatsa walked ahead of the white woman, wanting all the time to turn back and speak to her in her own tongue. “I feel pain for you,” she wanted to say. “I feel pain that is deep for what Nakoa is doing to you!”

At the river, Anatsa had studied the white woman. She was so vivid and vibrant with life. Naked, she was slender and yet voluptuous; her softly rounded hips and beautiful breasts made Anatsa despise her own frail body. Every part of the woman was beautiful: her full red lips, her straight nose, the lustrous dark hair with its flashes of red in the sun, the long-lashed eyes. How could Nakoa take a woman of such beauty and make her unclean? The white woman did not want him. Anatsa had heard her frenzied attack upon him and had seen her forcibly dragged away from Natosin. Nakoa loved Nitanna—why did he have to make this white woman unclean?

When Nakoa slept with the white woman no man in the village would marry her and she would be traded from one to another until she died. She would have no place among the women of the village either, for the unclean were avoided, were not invited to any gatherings, were even denied the right of prayer at the Sun Dance. Tears came to Anatsa’s eyes. She had known Nakoa all of her life, and since Natosin had lost all of his wives in the sickness from the Mandans, she had prepared all of Nakoa’s food. Around him she had always felt at ease. He had always been so gentle with her; understanding had always flowed between them. He was the only man in the village who made her forget her crippled body. He was even a part of the world she had made for herself where everything was beautiful and where she was accepted.

Anatsa reached the inner circle of tipis with her wood and since it was too early to start the cooking fire, she sat outside her brother -in-law’s lodge and began to dream quietly in the sun. She had no family except her older sister, Apeecheken, her brother-in-law, Onesta, and their child, Mikapi. Anatsa’s touch with reality was through them, but her own world lay deep in the shadow of the mountain where she had her own place. Here was a glen with a magical stream that was balm for the wounds of living. When the struggling and grieving of the prairie became too intense, she had the cooling waters that sprang from the earth’s breast. Early in the morning when Apeecheken, Onesta, and Mikapi all slept, and the firepits were still warm with the ashes of the night before, she would steal from the village. Sometimes the late moon would still be in the sky, a pale silver thread when the eastern horizon was streaked with color. All would be quiet and still. Not even a dog would bark as she walked quietly past the tipis.

In the shadow of the mountain forest she would reach her glen, when the tips of the tall trees around it were orange and the air yet night-cold. Here she would quake and shiver as if she had just been newly born, uncrippled. She would linger in the glen until afternoon. Then the forest would be hot, slumbering, and lazy, and she would breathe deeply the scent of warming pine needles. Birds joyously called back and forth above the motionless ferns and the cool moss that seemed so indifferent to the vibrant sounds around them. In all of this beauty she would lie still and sleep a sleep as golden as honey, and in the touch of the wind and the shade of the trees she would feel deeply loved, deeply blessed. In return she loved all she could see and all that she could not see. She would awaken and walk in wonder back to the village, and she would look down upon the tipis and the cooking fires and want to bless them all with the ecstasy she had felt.

She had waited many years to be a woman. She had waited patiently for her breasts to form, for her eyes to have something in them that would make a man love and want her. If her face could become beautiful then her deformed leg would not be seen; surely radiant beauty would put her leg in shadow. But she did not change. Her pale reflection in the river showed she remained too thin, a bud that would not open, a flower that had no sweetness with which to grow.

Suddenly, this afternoon, Anatsa no longer wanted her glen. The stream and its shadowed ferns were not enough. She wanted to be in the village with Apikunni even if the prairie was scorching under the sun. Water flowing from the beginning of life itself was not the earth where the animals crawled to mate. The glen and its pond and stream did not bear the image of the man she loved, Apikunni, as close as blood brother to Nakoa. He was the man she wanted, and yet he was the one to whom she could not speak a sensible word. Dogs and horses and even the worm beneath the moss could feel and desire and unite—but not she! Not she! She loved Apikunni tenderly; she loved him passionately, she loved him purely and she loved him lustfully, but never once had he seen her! Anatsa put her head in her hands in despair. Her own suffering was enough for the whole world—why should the white woman be treated like a dog bitch?

The moon was rising, silvering the prairie in poignant serenity. Anatsa thought back upon how many lovers yearned for each other in its magical light, and then she made herself turn away from its face. It was late and she should have started the cooking long ago. Her sister, Apeecheken, was pregnant and couldn’t stomach the preparing of food, so it fell upon Anatsa to do all of the cooking. Anatsa built her fire near Nakoa’s lodge and as she boiled meat, she watched his tipi thoughtfully.

Nakoa’s Nitsokan was the voice of the west wind, the woman of the west wind who had appeared to him in a vision when he had fasted and sought his sign as a youth. What had she been like, this foreign woman who had traveled from distant seas and brought to the dry prairie the touch of water? She had been seen only by Nakoa, for most of the boys who sought their Nitsokan in lonely and dangerous fasts in the woods had seen signs of animals—the eagle, the bear, the white wolf; no brave had ever ridden into battle protected by a human sign before. Yet his was the most powerful of medicines, gaining him the most coups among the Blackfoot, and bringing him the chieftainship of the Mutsik society.