Whispering Spirits (6 page)

“They are not tales,
Nato’sin
, they
are truths about our traditions and values. They include our
struggles to hold tight our principles and beliefs even though we
face ruthless change.”

Summer shook her head and turned her gaze
skyward. “I don’t know if you two have noticed those heavy clouds
moving in, but it appears a heavy storm is gathering and we’d
better get ourselves and bags to the tipis before everything gets
wet…including us.”

“I am not afraid of a little rain. But, we
should be wary of Thunder. Walking across a flat valley during a
storm is not a wise decision.” Running Crane grabbed
Nah’ah’s
bags as well as his.

As they hurried across the uneven field,
Summer marveled how her eighty-year-old grandmother kept pace.

“Look,
Niipo
, see the beautiful dark
blue flower of the camass and the violet blue of the western
virgin’s bower. Oh, it has been so long since I’ve seen the yellow
of wild parsley.”

“You’re loving this, aren’t you
Nah’ah
?”

“My time on Mother Earth is getting shorter
and shorter. I am happy because you are here with me. I am
fulfilling my duty as your grandmother. You must unpack our things
while I take a short nap.

“I’m happy to be here with you, too.” She
drew in the fresh mountain air.

Nah’ah
turned around.
“
Nato’sin
, you must kill us an antelope or deer. I will show
Niipo
how to cook a fine stew and how to make a soft, white
dress and matching moccasins with bone awls and sinew. We will
design from old Blackfeet patterns using glass beads, metal
ornaments, and even elk’s teeth.”

Summer’s arms ached from carrying the heavy
bags. “Why don’t we just relax? We won’t have time to make all that
in one week. I’ve seen your beadwork,
Nah’ah
, and it’s
beautiful. There’s no way I’ll be able to do that. I’d rather sleep
in and enjoy the scenery.”

“One week? Is that what your father told
you?” Running Crane laughed.

Summer glanced back almost forgetting he was
there. He easily carried two large bags in each hand. “I’m not too
sure where I heard a week. Maybe I just guessed it since that’s how
long we usually spend at the powwow gatherings. You’re saying it’s
longer than a week?
Nah’ah
, please tell me he’s joking.”

“Well, dear, I never thought about it much. I
must follow the path my grandmother shared with me. There is no way
to place a time on what we must do. It will take as long as it will
take.”

“You’re speaking in riddles. How long did it
take your grandmother to share what her grandmother taught her?
Just give me an idea how long we’ll be away from civilization.”
They approached the first tipi and Summer dropped her bags on the
ground. Her arms burned from the labor.

“I spent my entire summer with my
grandmother.”

“You’re saying we could be living here for
three or four months? I don’t think so! I can’t imagine anything
more…ridiculous than that. We can’t go back to the days of our
ancestors,
Nah’ah
. There’s no purpose to stepping back
hundreds of years. This is so not going to happen.”

“Well, we really don’t have much choice,”
Running Crane said.

“Meaning?” She glared at him.

“Well, I wasn’t really going to say anything
this soon…I mean…we weren’t planning on leaving for several months.
I knew I’d have had to tell you sooner or later…but later would
have suited me just fine.”

“Ugh! Would you just tell us already?” Summer
rubbed her forehead, surprised this was the first time it hurt
since leaving Browning.

“While landing…umm…a tree branch perforated
the fuel tank on the chopper. I’d radio for a maintenance crew to
drop in and fix it…but it seems we don’t have service out here. I
never considered us being out of radio range.”

“You’re saying you broke the chopper? We’re
stuck out here until someone back in civilization realizes we
should have returned…and then they’ll come checking on us? I hate
my life.”

“It’s not so bad,
Niipo
. I asked your
father to send a supply drop here around the first of August. So
you see, we won’t be so abandoned after all.”
Nah’ah
entered
the tipi.

“That’s two months from now. Two months!
Could this get any worse? I agreed to spend the summer taking care
of you. No one told me we’d be out here without even a flushing
toilet. Don’t you think I had the right to know?”

“Summer, show your grandmother some respect.
She’s doing what she feels is her duty. Your words are cold and
cutting. If I had a grandmother such as yours, I’d be so
grateful.”

Summer rolled her eyes and turned, facing
him. “I didn’t ask for your opinion. Just because I don’t want to
live in a tipi all summer doesn’t mean I don’t love and respect my
grandmother. I do. Why don’t you go shoot a deer? I hate the taste
of antelope.”

Grabbing a bag in each hand, Summer entered
the tipi and stopped just inside. She dropped the bags and sat. The
beauty and simplicity of
Nah’ah’s
tipi remained impressive.
As always straight in the back from the doorway a medicine bundle
hung in a place of honor. Grandmother would sleep on her bed to the
right of center. At the end of her mattress leaned a backrest made
of willow branches lashed together with cotton cord and edged with
woolen fabric on a tripod. To the right of her bed a large parflech
with a bear cub,
Nah’ah’s
sacred animal helper, beaded on
the front flap. This was like a thin, square suitcase for her
personal clothing and valuables.

Glancing to the left, Summer noticed the same
setup for herself. The parflech next to her mattress revealed a
skillfully beaded meadowlark, her sacred helper…if she believed in
such a thing.

Colorfully beaded and quilled parfleches
lined around the inside of the tipi to hold down the bottom of the
tipi liners. No doubt they were loaded with dried meat and
pemmican. The ground had been covered with soft rabbit fur in all
shades of white, tans, browns, and even black.

The cooking tripod took dominance in the
center from which a kettle hung from a chain over the fire. Summer
noticed the altar between
Nah’ah’s
mattress and the cooking
fire, in the center of the tipi. She remembered watching
Nah’ah
clear off the grass and scrape the earth in a certain
shape to build a white clay altar. She’d burn incense every time
she was going to pray or take out the medicine bundle, in the
morning, or when she brought the bundle back inside, before dark.
Nah’ah
would take the bundle outside on nice days and hang
it from a wooden tripod to the back of the tipi. She used a forked
stick beside the altar to make incense. Summer liked the smell of
sweetgrass and often received braids of it from
Nah’ah
on
her birthday. She secretly loved them.

“You seem at peace,
Niipo
. Does my
tipi please you?”

Summer glanced over at
Nah’ah
and
smiled. “It brings back many memories of when I was young and
treasured everything Blackfeet.” Summer moved her fingertips across
the taunt tipi wall.

“As a child I loved living with my
grandmother in her tipi. One of our ancestral traditions is that
the tipi and its household contents belong to the woman. If she no
longer keeps her husband, he is left with nothing. Most times he
would just go move back with relatives or friends. If a couple has
a tipi design it belongs to the husband and wife together, but the
cover that it’s painted on still belongs to her.” Thunder rumbled
in the distance.

“So they even had divorce in those days,
huh?” Summer couldn’t help chuckling. “Not all that much had really
changed.” She moved to the center fire and dropped to her
knees.

“I know most
napi’kwans
think the
Blackfeet woman was a slave, but they are wrong. A husband does not
have property rights in his wife. He cannot just trade her away. He
has all personal rights and can beat her, or for just cause even
kill her, but he cannot sell her to another man.”

“Well, that’s reassuring, isn’t it?”

Nah’ah
sat near the altar. “Did you
know our tipis always face east? Each morning we pray and sing our
sacred songs to help 
Natosi
 rise.”

“Like the sun really needs our help to rise.
Did they really believe the sun wouldn’t rise if they didn’t sing
sacred songs?” Summer got to her feet and dragged her bags to her
mattress and sat.

“Don’t be sarcastic, dear. I put a hot coal
on my altar and sprinkled sweetgrass on it to burn. The smoke
purifies us and lets 
Ihtsi-pai-tapi-yopa
 hear my
prayers.”

“Grandmother, I realize you feel a need to
tell me all this, but I don’t have a driving need to pray to the
essence of all life. I truly believe, if you must know, in Jesus
Christ. We can’t have it both ways.”

“Believing in a higher being is a good thing,
Niipo
. May I share the etiquette of the tipi with you?”

Summer felt ashamed for having scoffed at
Nah’ah
. “I’d love to hear about that.”

Nah-ah
smiled. “In the old days
entering a tipi had proper rules. A woman entered and turned to the
left while men entered and turned to the right.”

“Fascinating,” Summer leaned back on her
bedding.

“Proper custom required a person moving about
in the tipi to never pass between another person and the fire. Even
worse yet is if a person were to pass between the sacred altar and
the fire.”

“And if you did, what would happen to you?”
Summer yawned and closed her eyes.

“People would consider you to have bad
manners. Being respectful of customs was most important in those
days.”

“Kinda like eating with your mouth full of
food is rude and bad manners?”

“You are not in a very good mood, are you
Niipo
? Tell me what is wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong…unless Jordan’s murder
counts. Unless killing a man by hitting him over the head with a
frying pan counts. How about being accused of something illegal…but
you have no idea what they’re talking about? Yes, you might say I’m
a bit on edge and not exactly in a good mood.”

“My, you are…unsettled. I had a dream last
night. It was about you.”

“You know I don’t put much value in
dreams.”

“Our people believe dreams are actual
experiences of our shadows or souls while our bodies sleep. Sun is
the supreme god of earth and sky, and enables us to look ahead and
tell what is going to happen. I saw you talking to a man in black.
He held a flat, small, black suitcase and wanted you to tell him
why it was empty. You kept telling him you didn’t know anything
about it. He should go ask Joshua. The man in black had a gun and
he raised it toward you. Then I woke. What does this mean,
Niipo
?”

“You couldn’t possibly have dreamt that,
Nah’ah
.”

“Well I did. Don’t you feel the spirits of
our ancestors all around us? They are agitated and are whispering
to us. You must find a way to listen to them. I think they want to
help you.”

“
Nah’ah
, if I believed for a second
they could help me, I’d listen. But spirits don’t help people. Our
ancestors are dead and so are their ways. We have to face the
inevitable truth. The time of the dinosaur is over, never to
return. The same is true about the Blackfeet nation.”

“You are wrong,
Niipo
. We can live in
the world of the
napi’kwan
, but we still can stay true to
those who came before us. We can learn from their mistakes, so we
don’t make them again. We can take our traditional values and
practices to create a workable government. We need schools that
teach our young their past and help prepare them for the future. We
need to guide those in need and develop justice systems that are
fair to the Indian. As our people see their own traditions
reflected in these changes, they will support them. We must learn
to live together, we must learn to understand and accept each other
as individuals.”

“That sounds all great…and our relatives have
been saying the same thing for years. Where has it gotten
them?”

“When you were a young girl, you always felt
the pain of the Blackfeet. You wanted to get an education so you
could make things better for your people. But you have changed. You
are not the caring girl you once were. Now you only want to forget
the fight…it takes too much effort. If we all thought like you, we
would no longer be
Ni-tsi-ta-pi-ksi
, the real people. Our
young people will never know the
Sao-kit-apii’ksi
are our
people who live on the plains. That
Nitsi-poi-yiksi
are the
speakers of the Real Language, our language. Your father teaches
this to the children. Do you want to tell him it all means
nothing?”

“I’m sorry,
Nah’ah
. I don’t hear the
whispering spirits as you do. I am what some call an
apple
.”

“I do not understand what you mean.”

“It means I’m red on the outside, white on
the inside.”

“I do not believe this,
Niipo
. You
have been gone too long. You have lost your way. I have felt this
for some time. That is why we need this time together.”

“I’ll only disappoint you,
Nah’ah
. I’m
going back as soon as that supply chopper gets here.” Summer closed
her eyes and listened to the chanting prayer
Nah’ah
offered
at the altar. The pleasing fragrance of sweetgrass filled her
senses and she closed her eyes and relaxed.

* * *

Summer approached Two Medicine Falls. The
clear water, cold as ice, surrounded by an unbroken forest,
extended from the north and south shores high on the mountain
sides. To the south, Mount Rising Wolf rose abruptly, and to the
west, the massive Continental Divide displayed snow covered
peaks.