The Blue Smokes

For half a moon we travelled through gentle country. Flat grass-lands gave way to rolling hills; water and game were plentiful, and the suffering of the Bitter Mountains was forgotten in the easy marches. Raki and I were happy; for when we made camp the men and women shared in all that needed to be done, and the dusk was warm with laughter.

Raki smiled at me, “Redskins who laugh, my Piyanah, and once we should have been surprised as though owls had spoken with the voices of Elders!”

Several times we saw traces of old camp-fires, but no human being until the fifteenth day. He was a hunter, and before he spoke we knew he could not be one of the Smiling Valleys, for his skin was too dark and his nostrils too broad. He told us we were entering the territory of the Blue Smokes and that the Smiling Valleys lived much further to the west. At this news we were disappointed, though the warmth of his greeting was enough to show us we had been wise to travel away from the hard North.

When we first sighted the encampment of the Blue Smokes we thought their tribe must number over a thousand, for the cluster of tepees, which were thatched with straw, was surrounded by between fifty and sixty wide strips of cultivation. It was only later that we learned they were less than three hundred and not sufficiently important to claim a place at the Feathered Council. To them, the cultivation of fields was more important than hunting, and they seldom killed for meat unless hides were needed for moccasins. Even their clothes were woven from plant fibres, though the method of preparation they did not tell us; it was a jealously guarded tribal secret, the cloth being their most valuable form of barter.

We were taken to the Chief, and found him to be a man past middle age. He expressed almost excessive pleasure at our arrival, and immediately gave orders for a feast to be prepared in our honour. We noticed that men and women shared the same encampment and the Chief displayed no surprise when Raki and I both wore a feathered headdress when we attended the feast. None of them had been to a Gathering of the Thirty Tribes, and they were eager for news of what had taken place there that year. It was late on the first night that the Chief admitted he had heard of us from the Chief of the Smiling Valleys. My ordeal had greatly increased in the telling! The caverns had been the home of particularly horrifying demons, which I, being possessed of curious magical powers, had been able to slay in hundreds. The Chief of the Demons had at last been driven to beg for clemency, which I had granted in return for an oath of allegiance from his people. I was now credited with being able to produce cloudbursts or droughts with equal ease, so that the crops of my friends flourished, while my enemies dwindled through famine.

I protested that Smiling Valley had been far too generous with his praise, but to my amusement, and Raki’s also, this was taken for the natural modesty of a mighty warrior.

Each day brought further signs that the Chief dreaded our departure, for he was pathetically anxious that nothing should occur to offend us. Would we like tepees to be built close to his encampment, or would a site further up the western slope above the river be more to our liking? The diffidence with which he implied that a night of rain would be beneficial to his crops was almost ludicrous. I nodded, and then walked away as though deep in thought. He watched me anxiously, and then looked up at the sky to see if clouds were already hurrying to my summons.

It was with embarrassment that I woke in the night to hear rain drumming down, for I knew I should never be able to convince him that it was not due to me.

“I hope the Rain Spirits can laugh,” I said to Raki, “and that they have heard my apologies for being credited with powers which belong only to them!”

It was difficult to make the Chief understand that we must have our own place of the corn-growing, and that this wish was not due to any lack of hospitality: at last he became reconciled, but clung to the hope that we should remain close neighbours. He praised the hunting-grounds adjoining his own to the east with words which might have described the Land beyond the Sunset. Nowhere else was game so easy to kill, or rivers so thronged with fish; nowhere were trees so noble, or the earth so lavish with crops. We realized why he wanted us on his eastern boundary…he was afraid that if we also adjoined the Smiling Valleys some of our beneficent powers might be deflected from him.

We needed time, both to explore the proffered hunting-grounds and to discover whether such neighbours would be healthy for our own people, so we told the Chief that it was our custom never to make an important decision save at the full moon. To this he acceded with haste, clearly upset that he had not understood so obvious a law without being told.

The superstitious awe in which the Blue Smokes held me began to spread even among our own people. Several of the women who had been troublesome in crossing the Bitter Mountains came to apologize for their past lack of faith in my leadership. I tried to make them see that I was the victim of a legend, but they did not really believe this. I tried being angry with them, and they became abject. I tried laughing at them, and they wept.

Only then did I realize how easy it had been for the Old Women to wield power: the passionate desire not to think, not to accept responsibility, was a plant with a hundred roots: you think you have torn it up and left the ground clean for personal integrity to flourish, and then shoots of the unclean weed appear and choke out everything else which tries to grow there.

The women of the Blue Smokes brought gifts to me, and when I thanked them, they said shyly, “I have two daughters and I want a son,” or “My husband prefers another squaw,” or “My child is sick”…and then looked pleadingly at me to help them. I tried to explain that I was a very ordinary woman, who had no magic except that she belonged to a tribe who recognized that man and woman are the right eye and the left eye, the left hand and the right hand, the left foot and the right foot, of a third who is man and woman, and so greater than either. I told them that without this recognition both men and women are crippled, having the use of only one eye, one hand, one foot; and that by their own choice they could bring this recognition into their own tribe and share our magic. But they stared at me uncomprehendingly, and then went forlornly away, saying, “Forgive me, that the gift I brought was not enough,” or, and this was even more difficult to bear, “Now I know that I am not worthy of your magic.”

Hoping to prove that I was ordinary, I went hunting with the men. But when my arrows brought down a deer they would not believe my skill came from long practice as did their own. They thought I had only to notch an arrow to my bowstring for a demon to carry it to the quarry’s heart.

I realized more keenly than I had done before how lonely Na-ka-chek must have been. They were trying to thrust on me the loneliness of a Chief who deliberately kept apart from his tribe. Everything I did became hideously important: if I carried seven arrows in a quiver, the next day every hunter carried seven. If Raki and I went down to the river to swim at dawn, next morning the bank was thronged with people. They thought we had come to talk with water spirits, who, if they saw them in our company, would accept them as being under our protection. I could not break down their silent belief that I had powers I was not willing to use to help them. I began to be afraid that they would soon begin to fear me, and hatred is always born from fear.

Most of our tribe were happy with the Blue Smokes. After many hardships they enjoyed the easy way of life; they shared the awe in which I was held, and unless Raki had ordered them to do so, they need not have helped in the fields, or in hunting or setting fish-traps, for everything would have been willingly provided. Our squaws, who had been scorned and ill-treated by the Old Women of the Two Trees, were now envied and admired. They grew sleek and lazy with praise, and found it more pleasant hearing than they received in the company of their men, who laughed at them, or scolded them for feeding on credulity.

I began to lie sleepless at night, worried and indecisive about the future. Where should we go if we left here? The legend had come from the Smiling Valleys so we might expect the same treatment if we went to them. Both Raki and I longed to discover something wrong with the eastern hunting-grounds, but there was everything a young tribe could hope to find. We could not go further south, for the way was barred by a waterless desert, only five days’ journey further on; a desert which in the memory of the Blue Smokes had never been crossed. Should we take the land so freely offered to us, and hope that in time we should be accepted as ordinary friends…or had awe already become too strong to destroy? Here there is everything they need, and because Piyanah went through an ordeal must she take them away from it? I felt very young and irresolute, and longed to be able to talk with Na-ka-chek as once the child Piyanah had longed for her mother.

Since Dorrok’s death it was a council of six who made all important decisions: Raki and I, Rokeena and Tekeeni, Gorgi and Cheka; for the others still found it easier to accept leadership than to share it. The moon when we must decide whether to go or stay was now at the full. We had avoided discussing this vital problem with the rest, so that our opinions should be unprejudiced. The six of us gathered in the shade of an ilex that grew on the crest of the slope overlooking the cultivation, and it was time to speak.

Cheka, the youngest and least experienced, spoke first. “It is difficult to be quite honest but I will try very hard. I want to stay here, because it is kind and easy. The country is safe, so Gorgi is willing to take me with him everywhere…and being with Gorgi is the only thing that really matters to me. But many of the other squaws no longer rely on their husbands as they did when things were more difficult.” She pointed down the slope. “Look at that field…thirty of our women working there and not a man with them…and the rest will be chattering with the women of the Blue Smokes.”

“She is right,” said Gorgi, “I too would like to stay here, but the men of the Blue Smoke laugh at us for being dependent on squaws…though they think we do not hear their laughter.”

“Their women laugh at us too,” said Rokeena, “because they say we dare not let our men out of our sight. They say our men are children, who need our protection even when fully grown. They pity us, because our men are not strong enough to make us obedient! Because I stay with Tekeeni they tell me I am brave to bear so great an affliction as to have to follow a man who has the body of a warrior and the spirit of a child, who must cling to a woman’s hand because he has not learned to walk alone.” Then she turned to me and asked, “Have the Chief’s women spoken to you like this, Piyanah?”

“Yes,” I said reluctantly, “they ask, ‘What has this equality you talk about given to your women?’ And when I try to explain they nod their heads and say, ‘The men of your tribe are clever, for they make you do their work as well as your own.’ They believe equality is impossible…and so do the men.”

“Yes,” said Raki, “so do the men. I told the Chief that Piyanah wears the Scarlet in truth, and that she won it without using any weapons denied to ordinary mortals. He did not tell me in words that he thought I lied, but even though these people value courtesy he could not hide his disbelief. Though neither men nor women will acknowledge it, they are afraid of each other. The women fear the men because they need their protection against enemy Braves, against pumas, against having to think for themselves. Men fear women because they still resent the dependence on their mothers which they felt as children; they resent their physical need of women which drives them from the complete independence they covet above all things. They fear the unspoken power of women, which they think is due to their familiarity with certain demons…you will have noticed that in their legends the spirits, even the thunder spirits, are always female, and that only a woman can kindle a watch-fire.”

“They are afraid of each other,” I said, “and both are proud of inspiring fear.”

“Is that why they offered us hunting-grounds?” said Tekeeni. “If they fear themselves they must fear everyone else, and thirty-eight Braves within two days’ journey would add to their protection…especially as the Chief must know his tribe are vulnerable after too much security. The Blue Smokes do not belong to the Thirty Tribes, but last year at their place of barter they heard of the massacre of the Beavers, and also that it was the Two Trees who defeated the Black Feathers. Our numbers are small, but those who might come to our assistance are many.”

“Of course that is why they are so willing to teach us their ways of cultivation, to offer seed, and help in preparing our future fields,” said Gorgi. “Honey to tame a bear…for a tame bear will still attack the stranger in the encampment.”

“It is easy to get grease from a tame bear,” said Cheka. She pointed to a file of our women who were carrying baskets filled with weeds on their heads, “If we stay here they will sow the thistles of superstition in the ground we clean. Already our men and women are drifting away from each other…nothing important has happened, no bitter quarrels, yet the thistledown of separation is settling everywhere, and if we let it root we shall have to pull up a thousand thistles…while two thousand others grow.”

“Then it is agreed we move on?” said Raki.

“It is agreed,” said the others.

“To the east or to the west?”

“To the south,” I said, and even Raki stared at me in astonishment, for had not the Blue Smokes told us that to the south was a desert which stretched to the end of the world?

“I have news for you from my father, Na-ka-chek. Last night he came to me while I slept, to say farwell before he went to join my mother beyond the sunset.”

“He is dead?”

“I have never seen him so vividly alive, but his people have seen his body fall to ash and watched the Death Canoe borne away towards the rapids. He told me that beyond the desert we shall find our place of the corn-growing. There is a river, running east to west through open grass-land, and then a shallow valley guarded by wooded hills. He took me there, though I did not see the desert we must cross. He even drew a line across a meadow to show where we must cut the first furrow for our planting.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this when you woke?” said Raki.

“I had to be sure that all of you were willing to go on. I saw Na-ka-chek, but I cannot make you see him. He has shown me the country beyond the desert, but why should any of you believe what I have seen? The Blue Smokes have lived here for three generations, and they say that no one who has tried to cross the Great Thirst has ever returned. They are sure there is nothing beyond it, except greater thirst, and death. Why should you attempt such a journey because a woman called Piyanah had a dream?”

“Why?” said Raki. “I will tell you. The Tribe of the Heron was born of a dream, and we shall find our place of the corn-growing through another dream.”