Panther in the Sky (70 page)

The world was hushed, perhaps ending, some feared; the great one-eyed shaman stood grim and mighty before them with his fire stick pointed at the sun and making it die above their heads; their souls quaked.

In a few minutes the world was in a deep, shadowless twilight. The sun was black, with a shimmering halo around it. Though it was noon, stars could be seen. The people saw some bats flutter back and forth over the glade, drawn forth by what seemed to be nightfall. The Prophet stood pointing at the hideously beautiful phenomenon with his stick until his shoulder ached, but his spirit was soaring with gratitude. He knew that every place where
there were red men, not just here in this holy village, but across the land, their souls now must be turning to believe in him. Tecumseh stood beside him, exhausted but serene and humble, his soul like a clear pool. All that marred it was his knowledge that it was a trick, that it could not have been done without the white man.

And in the garden of Grouseland estate at Vincennes, with his wife, Anna, and a few guests of the local society whom he had invited to have refreshments and watch the scheduled eclipse with him, Governor William Henry Harrison made learned statements of his knowledge of eclipses. The darkness, he told them, would remain for about seven minutes, after which the moon would pass from the face of the sun and continue its orbit. Some of the guests were looking at it through pieces of smoked glass the governor had prepared, exclaiming, making witty or profound comments, their glasses of whiskey momentarily forgotten on the linen cover of a lawn table. It was a pleasant diversion; for once the governor was thinking not at all about the problem of the Shawnee prophet.

At Greenville, where his hundreds bowed terrified before him in the still dusk, Open Door’s voice called out again through the glade:

“Do you believe me, my children? Are you ready to see the radiant sun again? Then I shall ask the Master of Life to remove his hand!” He lowered his medicine fire stick.

And when the stars faded and the treetops began to fill up with light again, and the birds to sing, and then it was a normal noontime, the people slowly stood up, blinking, looking around, gaping at the Prophet. Their hearts were shaken. Their souls felt drained, empty, thirsty for the wisdom and strength and faith that only their prophet could pour into them.

And in scores of other Indian towns, from the eastern mountains to the headwaters of the Missi-se-pe and beyond, the hand of Weshemoneto had scarcely released the sun before councils were called, to select more delegates who would journey to the Prophet’s village in Ohio, for there, plainly, the power of God dwelt in a man, a man who must be heard, a man whose word must be proclaimed everywhere.

And was this prophet not the brother of the great warrior Tecumseh, who had already come to these towns before, appealing for a true brotherhood of all tribes?

Yes, the men said in their councils. He is the one. And we should have listened better to his words before.

In the legends of most tribes, the best things had been done
when the Master of Life had joined a wise sachem and an extraordinary warrior chief together and given power to them both, like Hiawatha and Dekanaweda many generations ago, like Pontiac and Wangomend one generation ago. Now here were two, and they were brothers, both born under great signs, and their words had come in a time of great troubles. This prophet had said that these troubles were omens of the great final darkness, and that only those who gathered around his eternal light would be guided safely on the good road.

There is not much time left, they said in their councils. We must go and hear him, and learn how to be saved!

T
HICK
W
ATER WENT AWAY TO THE
W
YANDOT TOWN NEAR
the end of Lake Erie after the last snow, to get his young woman and bring her to the Prophet’s town.

Star Watcher was out on the edge of town, with Tecumseh’s son Cat Pouncing, digging with a mattock to gather sassafras root. When She-Is-Favored had died in an epidemic in her town, Tecumseh had gone to get his son and bring him to his own town. Naturally much of the boy’s care and upbringing had been taken over by Star Watcher, and the boy became as close to her as if she were his real mother instead of his aunt. The boy, now approaching his ninth summer, was a supple, tall, healthy child, beautiful of face, shy, and polite. Tecumseh would look at the boy and wonder why he had in him the fire of neither parent. When Tecumseh had time from his duties in the busy, crowded holy town, he would try to teach him some of the hundreds of tricks and secrets of hunting. The boy learned well but seemed to have no spring-forward of his own. He seemed to be the kind who could keep up but never darted ahead or lunged forward. But the demands of the village and its endless hundreds of pilgrims did not leave many opportunities for teaching the boy or
inspiring his energies. The lad seemed content to follow his aunt around and help her gather sassafras or cattail or red sunflower root.

Now Star Watcher looked up from the black earth and the pungent orange roots where she was digging and saw the tall figure of Thick Water coming up the road on a small horse, the warrior’s legs so long his feet brushed the grass. Behind him rode a woman, on a pony that was also pulling a travois. Star Watcher straightened up, slowly; she was nearly half a hundred now, and though she was as strong and healthy as a young man, she was usually tired in the back and feet because of her ceaseless labors for the holy town. She went out waving and smiling toward the road to greet the couple.

She had not known what kind of a woman to expect, and as she drew near she could scarcely believe the beauty of the young woman. Thick Water was not the sort of a man who would make women’s hearts race, as was Tecumseh, nor was he even a chieftain, but somehow he had won for himself a woman of extraordinary comeliness and physical grace.

When they went into the town, Shawnee warriors who had known Thick Water since boyhood looked intently at him as if trying to see if there might be something special in him that they had never noticed before. All they could presume was that this spectacular Wyandot maiden liked a big man, for Thick Water was certainly big. Or maybe she had presumed that he was very important because of his closeness to the Shawnee prophet and the chief. But it was plain that she adored Thick Water, and after a few days in the town, staying in the great House of the Stranger where the pilgrims were lodged, she was serene and happy and full of the good religious fervor of the place and was eager to be married.

The wedding was performed by Open Door in the old way, and Tecumseh was deeply moved as he saw his dedicated bodyguard standing, as he himself had just ten years before, with a most beautiful bride, holding the symbolic deerhide across their shoulders. And Tecumseh thought:

I do not want this to end for him as it did for me. So he summoned Thick Water to talk with him a few days after the wedding. He said, “My brother, I see great happiness on your face.”

“That is true.” Thick Water’s face was glowing.

“Your wife is good to you and to others?”

Thick Water nodded, his eyes full of wonder at his own good fortune. So Tecumseh said then, “Brother, you are one of the very
good ones of our People, and you have given me many years of your life. I wish your happiness to continue, and pray that your marriage will be fruitful with many beautiful and happy children. Because I wish that, I want to tell you something I think about marriage.” He was remembering his own brief and troubled marriage to She-Is-Favored, who had been this beautiful a woman to look at, and he said, “To be a good husband, and a father and teacher to his sons, and a bringer of meat and hides, is much for a man to do. It is hard for him to do something else besides. He must be near when his family needs him.”

“Yes.”

“That is why I want to advise you to stay by your wife. You have traveled much of this land being my friend. If you tried to go on with me as you have done, you could not be the best sort of husband, for the work I have ahead of me will pull me along many roads, for many seasons, maybe for the rest of my days. I have been given this to do, and because of it, I was not meant to be a husband.

“A man should be all he can. You are a kind of man who would probably soon become a subchief or a chief of a town, if you ever stayed in a town. You should …”

He saw the alarm dawning on Thick Water’s face, and the tall warrior quickly protested: “Wait! I respect your advice, and always do what you ask. But please do not forbid me to go on as I have with you. It is my duty! I have seen that it is!”

“To have you with me is good,” Tecumseh assured him. “But as you know I have others, enough others, who choose to go with me and watch my back for me. They do not have beautiful and kindly wives to provide for, or children to teach. Your wife would not understand. You have placed the cape across her shoulders, and drawn her to you, and that is your promise to protect her and be by her side.”

“No! She understands already! I have told her what my duty is, and of what you have to do, and the years it may take. She knows this!” Thick Water’s eyes pleaded.

“She knew this before she said yes to marriage?”

“Before I brought her here. Yes.”

“Brother, as you know, a chief cannot forbid a man from doing what he feels is right, but can only request and advise. If you go where I go and guard my back, I will be glad you are there.

“But I ask you: pay attention to how your wife acts. And if her eyes start to tell you that you are not a good husband, be wise enough to stop traveling and stay with her.”

T
HE TOWN OF THE
S
HAWNEE PROPHET HAD BECOME LIKE A
great hive, swarming with people whose prayer chants could be heard droning among the trees from a mile away. The road leading down the grassy plain to the wooded point where the village lay between converging creeks was a road wide and hard-packed from the passage of thousands of hooves and moccasins. Always there were people on this road coming or going, usually in tribal groups. Never had so many kinds of dress and decoration been seen in one town—tattoos, mussel-shell earbobs, badger skins, bison-horn hats, seashell wampum, eagle-feather bonnets, moose-hide moccasins. Never had so many languages been heard in one place. Sometimes the Prophet’s words had to be translated through four or five tongues before they could be understood by a particular band from far away, and even then it would have to be aided by hand language. But everyone had patience and paid the greatest attention. Weshemoneto could not fail to make his words understood.

Many of the people were hungry when they arrived and remained hungry all the time they were there. Though the land was rich and the villagers worked hard and cheerfully to raise enough food, and the hunters ranged far for meat, there was scarcely enough at any time to feed this multitude more than a few bites a day. If they had not been fed such rich spiritual food as they received, their empty stomachs would have caused serious trouble. But most were so enraptured by the hope and brotherhood and the palpable presence of the Great Good Spirit that they were little interested in food for their physical bodies. Their bodies were light and thin, and their souls were afloat on rapture. Open Door encouraged fasting, of course.

Still, the Prophet was not such a fool as to believe that his children could subsist on his words and inspiration alone, so he and Tecumseh, and their hunters, and in particular the women of the town, exercised every resource to obtain and provide food. When garden crops and corn were not ready for harvest, the women and their children prayed early in the morning, then spent their days foraging and gathering in the woods and meadows and bottomlands for miles around, bringing in roots, berries, wild greens, tubers, bird eggs, milkweed, seeds, even the inner bark of elm—all of the many things they knew were nutritious or just filling. All fished the river and the creeks. Boys shot or made snares for anything that walked, climbed, or flew. Families shared their meager rations with the endless procession of sojourners and felt
happy because they believed they were helping them along the Good Way. Always a generous people, the Shawnees in this holy town were now selfless to the point of sacrifice. Even if they had themselves eaten no more than a spoonful of succotash in a day, they would rush out to greet and embrace another new band of hungry Menominees or Potawatomis coming up the road.

Now, as Star Watcher and Cat Pouncing were returning to the town, carrying between them a blanket full of foraged roots, milkweed flowers, and watercress, they saw three white men riding along the beaten road, all dressed in black coats and hats, leading a laden packhorse. They were skinny, hunched men, who in their black garb looked like buzzards on horseback.