Panther in the Sky (41 page)

“To give land, the white men have to have markings that prove it is theirs to give. So they called some chiefs of the Ottawa, Ojibway, Wyandot, and Delaware nations to a treaty council, and persuaded them with rum and strong talk to mark away lands to the Thirteen Fires. It was easy for those chiefs to say, ‘Take it,’ because their people did not live on it. We, the Shawnees and Miamis and Mingos, lived on it! That is why the Long Knives did not invite Shawnee and Miamis and Mingos to the treaty. Do you see? They are cunning that way.”

“But,” Tecumseh exclaimed, “land belongs to Weshemoneto, not to chiefs! How can white men mark what belongs to the Great Good Spirit, and give it to their soldiers?”

“It is a power they believe they have,” Blue Jacket replied with a bitter smile. “Because they can draw lines and numbers and words to describe a place, they believe they have the power to buy and sell it. It is because of this power to write words that they think they have the other power. When I lived among the whites, every man I knew believed he had such a power. Even,” he said after a pause, “the ones who had not learned to write or read.” He snorted a contemptuous laugh.

Tecumseh said hotly, “I learn to read book words some, but it does not cause me to think I can own land belonging to the Great Good Spirit!” His head was whirling with this odd and awful idea the white men had. “Then they must believe they can also own and sell the waters and the sky!”

Blue Jacket laughed, tossing his head back, his strong smile flashing. “Young brother,” he said then, “they
have
figured out some ways to own the water. As far as I know, they have not yet devised a way to own sky. But if you ever see a white man looking up, he is probably working on a way to do it! Ha, ha!”

“Then,” Tecumseh said after a while, “I shall kill any white man I see looking up!”

Blue Jacket grinned at Tecumseh, then at Chiksika, and said, “Better to kill any you see looking at
you,
then. Because in the Long Knife Fire, Virginia, where I was a boy, they buy and sell
people.”

Then a little way farther, the trail beside the river grew wider, and the smell of cookfires came faintly on the breeze, and the ground in the woods was clear of deadwood. “Now ride proudly and sing,” Blue Jacket said. “Up there are the corn fields, and the head of the Maumee. Let us make Little Turtle feel strong-hearted by our riding-in!”

S
TAR
W
ATCHER’S SECOND BABY WAS A HARD SUCKER. THE
pull of his little mouth on her nipple was as much an ache as a pleasure. His suckling was so strong, she looked down at his round head with its thick hair and murmured, “Little one, must you try to turn me inside out?” She remembered her mother saying that to Loud Noise, fifteen years ago, so many years.

Star Watcher’s first child, a daughter, old enough to walk, was still asleep, only the back of her head visible above the edge of the blanket. Outside the door of the
wigewa
the sun was shining through the bright yellow treetops. The town was quiet. Almost all the warriors had ridden away with Blue Jacket days ago, her husband Stands Firm and her brothers Tecumseh and Chiksika among them, to join the Miami Little Turtle for a stand against a whiteface army that was in the distant Wabash valley. Her younger brothers Loud Noise and Stands-Between were away hunting on the other side of the Mad River.

Star Watcher, usually up before daylight to take care of all those appetites, had slept late in the unaccustomed quiet. She was still sleepy, still sitting naked in bed, and her mind was vague, half given to prayers for the safety of the men, half to the bright-colored patterns of the daydreams induced by the sucking sensations in her nipple.

So when the shouts and screams and banging began in a far part of the town, she had to come from a long way back in her head before she recognized the alarms of another attack. She was
hearing the rumble of hoofbeats before she could even move. Women and wailing children were running by outside.

By the time she was outdoors, carrying the baby boy in one arm and hauling the stupefied, terrified little girl by the hand, she could see the dust and gunsmoke and some of the oncoming Long Knife horse soldiers down the street, coming through the town at a gallop, shooting and hacking at the few warriors and boys who had rallied to try to resist them.

Star Watcher ran, at a maddeningly slow pace, up the lanes between the
wigewas,
having to stop again and again to raise the naked little girl every time she stumbled. A number of Maykujay women, not burdened by children, ran screaming past Star Watcher, veering toward the open space of the council ground, and there was a mass of horse soldiers behind them, so crowded by their own numbers that their big horses were trampling down fences and shivering the frail bark huts. Star Watcher could not run fast enough with her children to flee with those women, so she darted aside into a pile of cut brush, like a fleeing rabbit, shoving her little daughter in before her. She crouched there, the brush scratching and gouging her naked skin, hugging the infant under her bosom. Both of the children were howling in terror, but there was no need to hush them, for all the rest of the world was howling, too. Hooves pounded so close by her hiding place that dust and clods were kicked against her face.

And then, peering out, she saw a horror she knew she would never live long enough to forget.

A big soldier swinging a sword overtook the running Maykujay women in the council ground. One by one they tumbled to the ground as he hacked their heads open. She saw him kill seven.

Much later, when the town was roaring with flames and the brush pile was beginning to ignite from the blowing sparks, only then did Star Watcher muffle her children’s faces and dash out under the cover of smoke, toward the edge of town. Soldiers were still riding their horses about here and there, like big devil-shapes materializing in the smoke and then vanishing, whooping and laughing, and she had to duck behind something every time she saw one. They were rounding up prisoners, and she was determined that she and her little ones would not be captives of the Long Knives. Between two smoldering huts she saw two soldiers off their horses. They had caught a young woman who was as naked as she was herself. One soldier was holding her bent over with his arm around her head. She was thrashing and struggling and sobbing, but the soldier behind her had a strong hold on her
hips and was thrusting himself inside her with hard spasms that shook her whole body.

Star Watcher dared not let them catch her and the children, so there was nothing she could do to help the woman—except throw a rock and run.

The rock was as big as a man’s fist. When the soldier with his breeches down around his thighs fell to the ground, his skull was fractured.

L
ITTLE
T
URTLE WAS A WARM-HEARTED MAN AND AN ESTEEMED
chief, but what he told the Shawnees astonished and disappointed them.

He met them in the council lodge of Kekionga Town with great warmth and thanked them for coming to help the confederation. Little Turtle had a kindly-looking oval face, eyes set wide apart, lips usually in a fatherly sort of a smile. He was small, but his physique was compact and graceful. His head was shaved back to its crown, a large, roundish head. With him was a slim, erect white youth of about Tecumseh’s age, whom Little Turtle introduced as his son, calling him Wild Potato. This youth had been captured about ten years before in Kain-tuck-ee, and Little Turtle had adopted him. Wild Potato and Tecumseh spoke a little to each other in English, and the young man said his English name had been William Wells. He seemed vain of himself, and Tecumseh did not like him very much after the first few moments.

After the smoking of the pipe, Little Turtle explained why his Miami were at ease in their town instead of preparing for defense:

“It is true that the Long Knife chief Clark was coming here with an army from Kain-tuck-ee, as I said when I summoned you. A large army, maybe twenty hundred. First they went to Vincennes, and stopped there to wait for supplies to be brought up the Wabash-se-pe. I sent Chief Pacane with a white belt to ask why he was coming into our country, but he talked bad to Pacane and sent him back to us with a red war belt. And then he started marching on toward our towns. I got ready to fight.

“But then, a day’s march from the Wea towns, Clark turned his army around and marched back to Vincennes. This baffled us very much. But then Clark sent us a white belt and explained that his friends the Frenchmen at Vincennes had come after him begging him to have mercy on us, and to offer us a chance to council for peace. This I thought strange, and I do not know if it is true. But with his army sitting at Vincennes, so close to the
Wea towns, I knew we could not leave our homes unguarded and go raid Kain-tuck-ee anymore.

“Until then, at least, we have peace, and we can all hunt and harvest so there will not be a hungry winter. I am sorry, my brothers, that you have come so great a distance for no battle. But you are here, and it is time for the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon. Will you come to the Wea towns and join our People for the great feast?”

B
UT THE
SHAWNEE WARRIORS WERE NEARLY A HUNDRED
miles from their homes, and there was much hunting to do before winter, so they started back. Blue Jacket’s face was clouded. He had worked himself and his warriors into a mood to fight even the dreaded Clark. Now he felt a little relieved, but more disappointed.

They were not far out of Kekionga Town and going back along the riverbank trace when two hard-riding Shawnee warriors were seen ahead. They came on, yelling, and wheeled their lathered horses around to ride beside Blue Jacket, and they both talked to him at once. Their faces were grim, and Blue Jacket’s face grew pale and hard as he heard them.

Clark of Kain-tuck-ee had done another terrible thing. While marching one army up the Wabash-se-pe to intimidate Little Turtle, he had sent another army, of about eight hundred Kain-tuck-ee horsemen, to lay waste to the Shawnee towns again. Boone and But-lah had been seen among their officers. With almost all the warriors gone away to join Little Turtle, Black Hoof had been able to make no defense at all. The Long Knives had burned down thirteen Shawnee villages, including Chillicothe and Maykujay Town and Blue Jacket’s Town. They had as usual burned and trampled all the crops at those places.

The Long Knives had killed at least fifteen warriors and boys and that many women, and they had caught thirty-four women and children and old people who had fled too late. Among those prisoners were old Chief Moluntha and his three wives.

And here the worst had been done. Moluntha, too feeble even to consider resisting, had surrendered himself and his wives and had been put under the protection of guards. While he stood smoking a pipe with them, displaying an American flag on his shoulder and an old peace treaty, a loud-voiced officer had ridden up and gone among the guards, and he had asked the old chief, “Were you at Blue Licks?” When Moluntha said he had been,
the officer had shouted a curse and chopped the old chief to death with a tomahawk.

Blue Jacket shut his eyes in agony when he heard this; Moluntha had been guide and teacher to him. He ground his bared teeth and groaned.

“What officer did that?” Chiksika demanded. “Is he known to us? Boone? But-lah?”

The messenger replied, “We saw that same man and heard his voice at the Blue Licks ambush. He was the loud-voiced fool on a black horse who charged across the river and led his Long Knives into the trap.”

It was hours before Blue Jacket could speak of this. Then he said through tight lips, “That officer is called McGary. It was he who caused so many of his soldiers to die, and now it is he who kills our old father in revenge. May that McGary cook forever in white man’s hell. May all the men he has killed by his stupid meanness build the fire under him. And may our Moluntha sit above, smiling and drinking cool water, in the green heaven of our Great Good Spirit!”

“N
OW
,” C
HIKSIKA WHISPERED, “WATCH HOW THE WOLVES do.”

It was a surprise to Tecumseh to see that the bison were not afraid of the wolves. The great, dusty-dark animals grazed calmly on the tender prairie grass, and they seemed to ignore the wolves who shepherded them.

“Sometimes,” Chiksika said, “hunters can creep within bow shot of the bison just by putting a wolf pelt on and crawling close. The old men say that before there were horses or guns, that was how the hunters used to get close enough to kill them.”

The wolves themselves seemed equally unconcerned about the presence of the bison. They would trot leisurely along the edge
of the herd, tongues hanging out, heads low on a level with their silvery-gray backs, seldom even looking at the bison. But of course they were thinking of nothing but bison meat.

“Watch how they move,” Chiksika said. “It is a beautiful thing to see.”

The wolves seemed to flow without effort across the prairie; under their sturdy, shaggy-coated bodies their legs looked spindly, their feet big. And yet these thin-looking legs and big feet moved them with a sinewy, effortless grace, the feet seeming to kick the earth backward after each step, and though they seemed to be going at little more than a walk, they were actually covering ground as fast as a man could run. “They can go the day long like that,” Chiksika said with admiration, “and are not tired. Such a people the wolves are! Now watch this one on the edge. He is up to mischief. Look. He is laughing about what he is going to do.”

A bison cow was lying on the ground at the edge of the herd. One trotting male wolf, aware that a bison is not very dangerous lying down, ran up and stopped near the cow’s big head and stood there grinning at her. The cow was not alarmed, but she did not take her eyes off the wolf.