The actions of the Chief cannot be questioned, but we knew that the tribe were anxious and disturbed because one morning my father’s tepee had been found empty and for seven days he had not been seen.
Without being told, we knew he had come back, for the encampment suddenly lost the feeling of unspoken tension. We had just finished the dawn meal when he sent for us. If he had been an ordinary person instead of a Chief, I should have thought he was embarrassed, but that was impossible, for he was too remote and austere to know what real people felt like.
“It is not customary for a Chief to claim he has made a false decision, nor for a father to admit error to his children; but it is now necessary for me to do both these things, in loyalty to your mother.” His face was impassive, but I knew that to say this was causing him great effort.
“Your mother told you of the Before People.” He said this not as a question but to tell us that he knew it, so neither Raki nor I spoke.
“She told me of the Before People, but because of my pride I did not believe her: how could the son of the Chief learn wisdom from a squaw? But now her spirit has come to me, at the pool where I said farewell to her body; though of what I saw there I cannot speak even to you. To her I made an oath, the oath of a Chief which can never be broken; that what remains of my life on this side of the water shall be used to make reparation, so that one day she will take me to join her in the Land beyond the Sunset.”
I felt a warm spring of affection for him bubble up inside me. He had loved my mother, and he still loved her. It was only because he had forgotten how to let love shine out of him that he seemed so cold and alone.
“The words of your mother, to which I had not the wisdom to listen, have become to me the law greater than all other laws. She said that the way of the Before People was the way of the Great Hunters. I had not the courage to believe her, but now she has shared with me her courage, which was always greater than mine even though I am a Scarlet Feather and she a woman.
“She told me that the meaning of the legends was not understood even by the Elders, and that of all these the legend of the First Red Man has been the most distorted. For generations, men have believed that they are the children of the Great Hunters, who, when they have passed the last ordeals, will return to the Land without Shadows. We have been taught that women have no such immortality; that woman was given to man only to bring forth the fruit of his seed and to do for him such tasks as are too lowly for him. We believed that Earth was made for man; the fish for him to spear, the deer for him to hunt, the corn for him to plant. We believed that the seasons of the year are sent to teach him their qualities; so that he may grow strong in the conquering of winter and gain endurance from the long heat. All this I believed: because I had not learned that in your mother’s voice was wisdom; and in mine, only the utterances of a blind man who says there are no stars because he cannot see them.”
“When are you going to tell the tribe that they must follow the Before People?” I asked eagerly.
“They would not believe me. Why should they, when I did not believe your mother?”
“But if you told them, they would have to believe you, because you are the Chief.”
“Had I taken your mother to live at my side they would no longer have acknowledged my authority. It is the new Chief, Raki and Piyanah, to whom they will listen.”
“Both of us to be the Chief?” I asked.
“Both of you; and you need not wait until my death, for you will lead your own tribe when you have become ‘proud with feathers’.”
From the cedar-wood chest he took the great headdress which he wore in council and on all ceremonial occasions. “This has been worn by my father, and my father’s father, for nine generations. With you it must find new life. Each feather should be a symbol of something the Chief has brought to the tribe: scarlet for an act of special courage, yellow for the wisdom of a new law, white for a vision of the unseen things.”
“There are three black feathers. What do they mean?” said Raki. “I thought that black feathers always belong to the Enemy.”
“They are supposed to record a victory, in the far past, over the children of the Carrion Crow. But your mother told me they should mean that the Chief had gone down into the Underworld to rescue one of his people from the Lord of the Dark Moon.”
“Is the Underworld the same as the Cavern of the Blind Fish?” I said, remembering the legend of the boy who had gone there to get the second pair of eyes which restored sight to his twin brother.
“I cannot tell you; for I have never been there.”
“Do the Blind Fish exist, or are they only a legend?”
“I cannot tell you; for I have never seen them.”
“What ordeals shall we have to pass before we become ‘proud with feathers’?” asked Raki.
“It is to tell you the nature of these ordeals that I have brought you here,” said Na-ka-chek. “Your mother, whose voice is truth, told me that even if my Braves increased tenfold, no arrow of theirs could kill the Sorrow Bird while men and women are still divided against each other. She said that the strongest warrior was a cripple if he had not a woman for his dear companion, and that a squaw who had borne many children was barren unless she loved their father. In you and Raki I have seen the truth of her words; now you must learn to teach her truth to your people.”
“If they won’t listen to you, why should they listen to us?” said Raki.
“Because you will become the bridge by which they can cross the Canyon of Separation. Each of you must learn to be neither man nor woman. Raki will be the ‘not-man,’ Piyanah the ‘not-woman’. Each of you must gain a brown feather; but during the seven years that will prepare you for the ordeals, Raki will live as a squaw; until he has learned to think as a woman, and can speak to them in a voice which they understand because it is their own. Piyanah will live as a boy; she will learn to think as they do, feel as they do, challenge their hard endurance with her own. Only when they have had to accept her as one of themselves will they believe that woman is the equal of man. In Piyanah, their fellow Brave, they will see all women as worthy companions. In Raki, all squaws will see the men they need no longer fear, the men who will no longer despise them. Then will Raki and Piyanah be the Chief of a new tribe, in which the men and women will honour each other in equality, and bear children in whom the Before People will live again on this side of the water.
“At the next full moon Raki will go to the Squaws’ Tepees and Piyanah will join the boys. It will be as though the Canyon separated you also: Piyanah who has begun her warrior training will not speak to Raki the squaw. But in seven years two Feathered Headdresses shall be made, for Raki and Piyanah, the Chief of a tribe whose happy voices will be heard by your mother in the Land without Shadows.”
Then, without waiting for us to answer, he told us to leave him, but as I went out of the tepee I heard him say softly, “When your mother hears their voices perhaps she will allow Na-ka-chek, who was blind, to come to ask for her forgiveness, because she knows he has fulfilled her dreams.”
When we left the Great Tepee, Raki led the way among the winter birch trees to the rock where Mother had waited for us, when we first learned why we were not the same as other people. The silence was deep as a snow-drift; far away, muffled by the cold, I heard the hunting bark of a coyote. Raki stood looking across the falling shadows of the lower slopes to the distant mountains. Then he said:
“Everything we can see, even the patterns our snow-shoes made yesterday, is unchanged; only you and I are different. We are going to follow the Before People, and because of us the squaws and the Braves will laugh together, and their children will not be frightened by legends, for we shall have killed the Sorrow Bird.”
One phrase of my father’s stood out like fresh blood on snow, “For seven years you and Raki must live apart.” Surely Raki had heard it too?
“Raki, you are talking as if it were really going to happen. Didn’t you hear him say it would be seven years before we passed the ordeals and could be together?”
“Until we are ready to lead our own tribe.”
“I don’t want to be a Chief! I want to stay as we are, you and I together, always.”
“Because we love each other we can never really be lonely, but we can’t let the rest of the tribe go on living as unhappy strangers just because we haven’t the courage to be parted for a little while.”
“Seven years isn’t a little while! Raki, don’t go away from me. I’m frightened, Raki, and you never let me be frightened by things other people tell us.”
He jumped down from the rock and put his arms around me. “You’re crying, Piyanah, and you never cry. Think of how we are going to teach other people to be happy.”
“How can we teach them to be happy when we shall have forgotten what it feels like! Mother told us that it was because the tribe had forgotten how to laugh that they couldn’t remember the Before People. Don’t you remember her story about the girl and the hunter, whom the animals protected because they had the light on their foreheads which comes from loving someone more than yourself? We’ve got that light, Raki, and if we are parted it will go out and we shall be alone in the dark.”
“It will be very difficult for a girl to become a Brown Feather,” he said slowly. “If you are less swift, they will say you are a stone in their moccasins; and if you are better at the things they do, they will be jealous, and cruel.”
“I’m not frightened of them. It’s being parted from you I’m afraid of.”
“It’s only for seven years. Perhaps it will be less if we learn very fast.”
“You talk of seven years as though they were seven days! Being without you will be worse than being without food or water; it will be like not being able to breathe.”
“Seven years is a very long time. …I had forgotten how long it was going to be before we shall be ready to lead our own tribe.” Then, as though thinking aloud, “Three died in the ordeals last year. It will be worse for Piyanah than for me…her body is not so strong as mine.”
“Then you agree, Raki, that we can’t let them part us?”
He sighed. “Can we betray the Before People?”
It was dark when we got back to the encampment. The others had finished the sunset meal, but food had been left in our tepee. I tried to talk of the things we should do when we had our own tribe to look after. But louder than the words, my thoughts kept saying, “Soon we shan’t be together any more, any more, any more,” on and on, like the feet of a weary runner.
Every day Raki made me practise all he had taught me of a boy’s training. Time after time he went over the wrestling holds, showing me the exact spot where pressure on an arm snaps the bone like a dry twig, and how to turn an opponent’s strength against himself. I used his bow, which was heavier than mine, for the one I should soon be given would be longer by a handspan than any we had yet bent.
So as to try to get used to the new life we should soon have to lead, when we thought there was no chance of us being seen, we changed clothes and he pretended to be my squaw. He wore the bracelets and necklaces which had been Mother’s and the embroidered tunic I had worn at the Feast of Midsummer. I was showing him how to plait his hair, because soon he would have to do even the ones at the back himself, when I suddenly realized that the notes of the mocking-bird I had been hearing were made by a human throat.
Tekeeni, a boy two years older than us, swung down from a tree on the far side of the glade. He was laughing. “Poor Raki! Piyanah has turned him into a squaw! When he has learned still more of the ways of women there will be a great wrestling at the Choosing, for all the Braves will want Raki—the prettiest squaw of them all!”
Then he came towards us, mimicking the postures of the Betrothal Dance.
“Poor Tekenni will feel humble when he has been beaten by a woman,” said Raki calmly.
Tekeeni had obviously not intended to provoke a fight, for when he saw Raki was unembarrassed he said airily that he couldn’t stay to talk to us as he had to visit a snare he had set.
But Raki taunted him, “Tekenni is a child! He would run even from the Old Women in case they should smack him! Tekeeni dares not take three paces towards Raki, for if he did, he knows it would be a challenge!”
Tekeeni hesitated, and then took three steps towards us. Raki and I usually fought people together, but this time I knew he wouldn’t like me to help.
The fight was soon over, though Tekeeni didn’t give the sign which accepts defeat until blood was pouring from his nose and a loose eye-tooth hung from his upper jaw. He lay panting on the ground and then scrambled to his feet.
“If all squaws fought like you do, Raki,” he said with a grin, “it would be the women who carried the war bows and the men who stayed behind to wash the cooking-pots.” He pulled the loose tooth and held it out to Raki. “Here’s something to add to your bear’s claws when you get them.” His smile was crooked because of his split lip, but I knew by his eyes that we had found a friend.
One of the necklaces had broken in the fight, and after Tekeeni had gone we searched for the beads which had been trodden into the snow. Raki stood holding one of them in his hand. “I shall not be able to fight everyone who mocks me,” he said ruefully, “or I shall never learn to ‘Think as a woman, live as a woman, feel as a woman.’” He sighed. “I shall have to become impassive as the Elders!”
I didn’t want him to become impassive! I wanted him to go on laughing easily as a spring, not to turn his face into a mask which hid pain, and sorrow, and joy…if a Brave ever felt joy, even from me. Had I at last found a way to turn him from the path he had accepted? Mockery might have shown him how difficult the lonely years would be; would he let me suffer mockery?
After this I no longer tried to conceal my dread of the future. I told him that I might fail in the ordeals, and that I was frightened of dying; I did not tell him that I was more frightened of my heart turning into stone than my body into dust. But I could not make him promise to run away from the tribe; and we still had to count the days we had together. Eight, seven, six…time burning away faster than a pine-torch.
When there were only three days left to us, the fear of separation was stronger than the fear of arguing with the Chief.
Na-ka-chek heard me without interruption, then he said:
“I have already told you that you must become the man and the not-man; the woman and the not-woman. You must obey my laws until you are a Chief and ready to make your own.”
I thought that if I could break through his impassivity I might be able to make him believe me, so I tried to make him angry. “You are asking Raki to betray me as you betrayed my mother!”
“You are asking me to send you to the Squaws’ Tepees while Raki passes the ordeals alone. If he knew that you had not the courage to win the right to the Feathered Headdress, he would choose another squaw to bear his sons.”
“Raki would never choose another squaw! My mother said you had forgotten how to be happy and that was why the arrows of your Braves would never kill the Sorrow Bird. Please let us go to the Brown Feathers together, and then we will prove to them that because of love we are stronger than they are.”
“Why should they believe that love gives strength when you are already showing that it makes you a coward?”
“A man is not a coward if he says he will not be able to fight if you cut off his arms! That’s what Raki and I are like without each other…cripples! How can a cripple fight?”
“You must be strong alone before you can be double strong together.”
“Why should we be separated so as to learn how to become one again? If only you would let us train together, we will each win four Scarlet Feathers; no one has ever done that!”
“You mean that you hope Raki will win eight feathers, and give half his honour to you. You must learn to wield authority in your own right before men will accept your words: if you returned from the ordeals in Raki’s company, the men would say, ‘She is like the squaw who carried home the deer for the hunter…and claimed the kill for her own.’”
“If you make me leave Raki, men will say things that make bitter hearing for you! They will say, ‘Piyanah, the daughter of Na-ka-chek, is a coward! Na-ka-chek was foolish to have called her his son.’”
There seemed no ember of kindliness in the cold ash of his eyes. “I have spoken; and the word of Na-ka-chek is not questioned by one of his tribe.”
I managed not to cry until I thought Raki was asleep. The tears only increased my grief, but I could not stop them. Suddenly I knew he was awake. As he gathered me closer into the shelter of our fur robe, he said:
“You needn’t sorrow any more, Piyanah. We are going to lead a new tribe, but now, not after seven years. It will be a small tribe, of two people who love each other.”