Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02 (7 page)

 
          
“Welcome,
ladies and gentlemen, to the morning session of the American Folklore Survey
Symposium,” he said. “It’s my great privilege to present Chief Reuben Manco of
the Cherokee Nation, Master of Arts and Phi Beta Kappa at Dartmouth. Some of
you heard him briefly yesterday. Here he is, to speak about what Native
Americans have done and said and believed.”

 
          
With
that, Pitt walked away into the wings. Manco came to the lectern and bowed his
feathered head to the applause. His brown face had deep furrows, made into dark
lines by the overhead lights.

 
          
“How
,
”
he said, in the deep voice he
used for formalities. “Yes, as you’ve heard, I’m a
Tsukali
—what white men call a Cherokee. I’m a full-blooded American
Indian, and I’m proud to say that.”

 
          
He
leaned above the lectern. “Can’t many of you claim some of that blood?
Genealogists will tell you that if your ancestry goes back before the
Revolutionary War, you’re almost sure to have Indian blood in your veins. And
if your forefathers came here later than the Revolution, by way of
Ellis Island
, your
America
is still Indian America. You smoke tobacco,
lie in hammocks, eat com and squash and sweet potatoes, you paddle canoes and
wear moccasins and catch American fish and hunt American deer. You are of
America
, though you forget what
America
was when the first white explorers found
it.”

 
          
He
sighed deeply. The amplifying microphone carried his sigh over the listeners
like a lingering puff of wind.

 
          
“The
white strangers came and took the land from the Indians. They changed
everything. Once the buffalo blackened the Western prairies, the passenger
pigeons filled the skies with the thunder of their wings. Where have they gone?
Where has everything gone? The forests cut down, the lakes and rivers poisoned,
the earth made bare and sterile. The Indians never did that, not in their forty
thousand years. The white men have done it in less than five hundred. Yes, but
you will say,
America
is progress. The white men have civilized and educated the Indians. But
is that really so? Was the Indian really just a savage?”

 
          
“No,”
said somebody in the midst of the audience. Thunstone wondered who had spoken.

 
          
“No
is the right word,” said Manco.
“Permit me to quote an illustrious American, a man without whom the
United States
would have had some difficulty in becoming
the
United States
. I refer to Benjamin Franklin. Here’s what
he said, and I can quote him by heart: ‘Savages we call them, because their
manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think
the same of theirs.’ ”

 
          
He
lifted his head with its tall feather and let his eyes rove over the audience.

 
          
“Oh,”
he said in a voice that suddenly rang, “our lands have been taken, but our
names stay on those lands. On states called
Massachusetts
,
Connecticut
,
Arkansas
,
Tennessee
.
Texas
; on rivers like the
Mississippi
, the
Missouri
, the
Ohio
, the
Potomac
; on towns, on villages,
all through the country.
You can’t wipe those Indian names away!”

 
          
Again
he paused, and smiled as though in self-deprecation.

 
          
“But
I didn’t come here to moralize,” he said, more gently. “There isn’t time for me
to consider all Indian peoples throughout the nation. I’m a
Tsukali,
a Cherokee, and maybe I should
just talk about my own people.”

 
          
Then
he talked about the Cherokees. They had once lived in the
Lake Erie
country, had quarreled with their kinsmen,
the Iroquois, and had migrated to the Appalachian country. Before that, as he
quoted scientific opinions, they may have descended from the Mound Builders,
whose structures still survive in the
Mississippi
Valley
. Coming into what would in time be called
the states of the Eastern South, they had lived and hunted and farmed and built
their special culture.

 
          
“We
didn’t five in wigwams, we had comfortable houses with pitched roofs,” said
Manco. “Our chiefs were wise governors and made just laws and saw that those
laws were obeyed. We had the finest of stone tools. We had copper, traded from
up in the
Great
Lakes
region from
which we had come. When
de
Soto
came through, in 1540, we were hospitable to him, courteous to him,
although he killed our warriors. Maybe, if
de
Soto
and the others had waited a few centuries,
we’d have developed our own civilization, greater than the Aztecs or the
Peruvians. As it is, we were called one of the Civilized Tribes.
Education?
Sequoyah gave us our own written language. John
Ross and Elias Boudinet and Major Ridge were our brilliant chiefs. Then came
the Trail of Tears and we were exiled across the
Mississippi
. I won’t go into the details of that infamy.
Later in our history, Stand Watie and Tandy Walker were generals in the
Confederate Army. Like all Indian tribes, we’ve been stolen stone-blind by the
Americans. It was only in recent years that we got the guarantee the
Constitution gives to all its citizens, that we could worship our own gods.”

           
He cocked his head and grinned. It
was a fierce grin.

 
          
“None
of the newcomer white settlers on our lands wanted that. They wanted to force
their own religion on the Indians. Let me quote to you what Sagoyewacha, chief
of the Senecas—the white man’s histories call him Red Jacket —what he said to a
bullying missionary. Sagoyewacha said, ‘You have taken our country but are not
satisfied. You want to force your religion upon us,’ he said. ‘We also have a religion
which has been handed down from our fathers. It teaches us to be thankful for
all the favors we receive, to love each other and be united.’ ”

 
          
He
spread his brown hands above the lectern.

 
          
“To
be thankful, to love each other and be united—aren’t those good, wholesome
teachings? We Cherokee have the same lesson from those we worship. From back to
our beginnings, we have turned in reverence to the sun, the moon, the wind and
the rain. We respect all living things. We even respect the rattlesnake. Doesn’t
it seem very likely that all your own prehistoric ancestors turned in reverence
to those same elements?”

 
          
Father
Bundren muttered something that sounded like “huh.”

 
          
“My
convictions are the ancient ones of my tribe,” Manco went on. “Yet, allow me to
say that I must respect other religions. I feel that any religion whatever is
so good that it is better than no religion at all.”

 
          
A whisper in the audience.
Thunstone, looking back, saw that
Grizel Fian sat up straight and nodded her head.

 
          
“I
have knelt down in churches,” said Manco. “I believe that my oath sworn on the
Bible will bind me. I’m always ready to hear and respect any profession of
faith, and I hope you’ll hear mine.”

 
          
He
elaborated. He told of the Cherokee belief, not only in benificent deities, but
in stealthy evil beings. He described the
anisgina,
the grisly creatures that are not ghosts exactly, but things that move and flit
like shadows and look for wickedness to do for wickedness’ sake. He spoke of
the terrible Raven Mockers, the eaters of human flesh, whose arms are feathered
like wings to make a roar in the air as they swoop down on a sick or wounded
man to suck his blood as a vampire sucks blood. He imitated the cry of the
Raven Mockers,
kraa-kraa,
and it
seemed to fill the auditorium to its high, vaulted roof.

 
          
“And
do I believe in these terrible things?” he cried. “I do, because I’ve
encountered them. I’m a Cherokee medicine man, and it’s my job to keep them
from hurting my people. Do I have magic power? Maybe it isn’t good taste to
show off, but shall I show off here, a little, for the benefit of the
skeptics?”

 
          
“Yes,”
said a voice from somewhere in the crowd, a woman’s voice. Manco grinned again,
white-toothed.

 
          
“Very
well, ma’am, with your permission I’ll try. I ask you to think of what the
weather was like when you came here this morning. Bright, wasn’t it? A clear
blue sky, not a cloud up there, isn’t that how it was?”

 
          
He
stepped away from the lectern and stood straight, his moccasined heels held
together, as though he were a soldier at attention. He lifted his arms above
his head, close together. His hands bent forward, side by side, toward the
audience.

 
          
He
began to sing, deeply, rhythmically, with words that Thunstone did not know.
After a moment, his feet moved. He paced off in a sort of dance, around in a
circle and around, singing all the time in rhythm to his steps.

 
          
All
watched and listened, in a silence so deep that Thunstone could hear
Sharon
’s deep breathing. But suddenly, a prolonged
peal of thunder clattered above the auditorium’s high roof, a sort of fusillade
of sound that greatened into a deafening, crackling roar. And up there above
them, the loud patter of rain, like myriad galloping hoofs.

           
Manco dropped his arms and stepped
back to the lectern. He leaned to the microphone. He beamed, as though in
triumph.

 
          
“Rain!”
he cried, his voice ringing above the downpour. “Do you doubt that it’s rain?
Do you think I’m using some sort of hidden sound effect? Go out to the door,
some of you, and make sure.”

 
          
Two
men rose and headed up the aisle. Father Bundren left his seat beside Thunstone
and went at a swift stride after them. The rain belabored the roof of the
auditorium.

 
          
“It’s
raining, all right,” shouted the first man at the door.
“Raining
bucketfuls!”

 
          
“And
not exactly needed just now,” said Manco into his microphone. “I’ll bring it to
an end. Keep watch at the door, if you please.”

 
          
Again
he raised his arms, but apart this time, in a V. He went into his dance, he
sang again. He made a circle, his moccasins shuffling.

 
          
Up
there on high, the stormy tumult died away, so abruptly and completely that the
silence oppressed. Back to the microphone
came
Manco.

 
          
“Look
out there again, please,” he called, and the men at the door went out and then
came back.

 
          
“It’s
clear,” shouted Father Bundren’s voice. “The
sun’s
out, no clouds in the sky.”

 
          
He
came quickly back to his seat beside Thunstone. He frowned thoughtfully. Manco
waited for him to sit down.

 
          
“That’s
just as I expected,” said Manco then. “And now, are there questions?” He
pointed to a woman who had raised her hand, and she rose.