There were thin, white strips of clouds that held motionless against the blue summer sky. High atop a cottonwood tree, three insects buzzed noisily together in their rendition of a sun-burning-skin song. Through the high grass and shrubs somewhere along the edge of the Iowa River, there rose the mirthful sounds of human conversation and laughter. These were the oblivious targets, walking humans. The insects sang, accompanying each other; one would start, the lead, and sing the loudest and longest skin-burning song; and the other two, at separate points, would join in, staying a pitch softer than the lead and stopping just before the end.
Upon hearing this, the blue-and-white-colored kingfisher rattled the humid air with its own dissonant cry, warning any of its kind nearby. Everyone present froze and waited. In an attempt to listen, the kingfisher leaned forward with tail feathers high and peered into the bend. The insects stopped their music, too. But there was only calmness. And the only movement detected was among the few butterflies crossing the open stretch into the dense woodlands on black-and-yellow fluttering wings.
As the human voices came up through the trees, the insect’s skin-burning songs picked up again. The sun’s rays were being directed downward to the skin of the unsuspecting humans.
“Darken them, darken them, for heing so hold as to walk in the sun’s fiery light,” sang the insects.
The kingfishers eyes followed the music and cried its warning for the last time. Nearby, a heron leapt clumsily into flight from a weeping willow tree and flew south along the winding path of the river. Below, the heron could see the flickering shadows of the many footprints made on the glaring bone white beach of sand.
Through the thick forests of the Black Eagle Child Settlement, the ever-present sun reflected and broke into a thousand shimmering pieces as a group of giggling children and their guide waded into the dark green water with bare feet. They stood still for a moment and listened. Among the children themselves arms were pointed, heads nodded, and questions quietly asked. Including an adult female, there were three girls and two boys. The boys, about seven and nine years old, furtively looked up and down the length of the large crescent-shaped beach before whisking their clothes off. The girls, as they had been taught, chose to keep their dresses on. Yet, as the woman took her bag to the bushes to change, the girls secretly took turns stealing looks at the skinny buttocks and penises of their brother and cousin. It wasn’t so much the idea of viewing a male private part as it was a chance to see each other make a “broken face, ha na tti na ko si wa” expression while looking at something they weren’t supposed to.
The woman observed them gawking as she was changing into a fancy and modern bathing suit. Flailing her arms and grunting, she scolded them for being capricious and informed them of the kingfisher who sat on a tan branch of a half-submerged tree in the hazy distance.
“Ki a tti me ko wa-ke i na-wi ske no. That bird will tell on you.”
The young people and the kingfisher watched each other as the woman walked out from the willow saplings, wearing a black bathing suit that had a small fancy skirt trimmed with yellow lace. From her bag she pulled a large oval mirror and looked at her spurious self while the children went to their designated spots in the river. This was the only place where the woman felt secure. There was privacy. From her share of the pearl-hunting proceeds she ordered modern clothes from a catalog. The earrings glittered as the “Deformed Pearl Diver” positioned herself over the deepest but most lucrative pool.
In the cloud-streaked clouds above, the black-and-yellow-winged butterflies hovered in place over Half Moon Beach. With their sparkling wings they danced hypnotically to the skin-burning insects’ litany. Suddenly, as the woman waded into the pool, she stopped. There, with the cool river water rippling against her knees, she removed her sunglasses, shielded her eyes from the glaring sun, and peered into the dense, serene surroundings. Sensing an instantaneous change would occur, she walked back out onto the hot sand and placed a large veil hat on her head.
From a faraway Cottonwood perch the heron brushed branches and leaves aside to observe. Like a World War I Sopwith Camel biplane the kingfisher buzzed the beach twice and strafed the area on its return run with a blaring staccato shrill. From the air traffic observatory post the skin-burning insects, e te si ke a ki, confirmed a manifestation was imminent, and their music was amplified by conches that were inadvertently abandoned by migrating pelicans. The spiral-shaped seashells wedged in old, hollow trees resonated like the sound of the trumpets once employed by Triton, the inferior sea god, half-man, half-fish; and the music’s intonation changed from a message of direction to that of paranormal warning.
Not knowing what else to do, one of the girls who was waist-deep in the river froze when she found herself standing atop a sleek creature. Each movement made urged the submerged creature to inch forward. She took off the shoulder bag of clams, tossed them to the closest diver, and waved to the shore, until the woman in the bathing suit inquired what was the matter. Through sign language the girl calmly asked if human-sized fish existed. The woman signaled back: Mi ya na me kwa-ye to ki. Me ke ki ne ta ye to ki? It must be catfish. A large one maybe? The girl’s fearful situation persisted. Her companion divers, including the heron and the kingfisher, watched helplessly as the girl drifted downriver. She instinctively stretched out her arms, attaining balance before being flung into the air. In an instant a black-whiskered seal exploded to the surface of the quiet, green river, barking in vigorous protest as it flash-swam through the exposed roots of the massive maple trees.
Knowing seals were considered bad luck, the pearl-diving expedition participants jumped out of the waters running. In a close pack, like ancient clan runners, they ran back through thick forest. The sound of their bare feet slapping against the dried mud of the winding riverside paths made ground-level roosting birds screech and flutter.
Still protective, the woman in her stylish bathing suit grunted and groaned in a frenzy to keep up with the young pearl divers’ full-pitch run. Born with a face that appeared to have been viciously ripped in half down the middle and then sloppily sewn back together with a dull knife and rope, the woman had seen her rapturous tormentor, the mystical animal who caused her facial deformity and speech-hearing impediment. “The Well-Known Twin Brother had no regard whatsoever for making her nose and mouth properly aligned,” she recalled her aunt saying. Throughout her life the woman’s deformed face, along with a stumpy tongue and a set of partially missing ears, made children scatter like mice. They squirmed and cried at an unimaginable hideousness under her large, veiled hats. The fact was, the only people privileged to see her disassembled Picassolike visage were close relatives. “It is no coincidence she laughs like a festive circus seal,” the woman’s aunt speculated, imitating her guttural sounds. “No wonder children hide.”
The watery belly flop landing stunned the girl who had been bucked off by the seal like a rodeo bull rider. Atop a seal’s back one moment, swallowing fish-ridden river water the next, and leading the way along the mud-hardened river path was all she remembered of the pearl-diving excursion as she shivered uncontrollably at home. To her aunt she described her frightening encounter. Beside her, in a small shovel of coals, a clump of cedar twigs crackled under an eagle wing fan. After the blue cedar smoke was directed over her body and head, she gave an engrossing account of how she rode for a short distance on the seal’s back. She thought it had purposely humped its back to lift her higher out of the water. Once she vaguely realized she was running on land, she said, the seal sounded like it was right behind her, barking! When she looked back and saw it was their chaperone and companion in the stylish bathing suit, making those scary noises, she blacked out. After being cleansed with cedar smoke, another girl picked up on their encounter and detailed how they crashed through the thickets and rushed recklessly over the Indian Dam. There, as they were midway across the dam, white fishermen agitated the situation. “Jesus! Hey, you girls, run from that damned monster behind you! Run! Jesus! Run! Run!” they had yelled out. Along with their own piercing screams and the cascading man-made waterfalls, the fishermen’s shouts of concern for their safety heightened into a chaotic din. The aunt asked what the white men called it. “Dam Monster,” she was told by the sobbing girls.
The woman in the provocative bathing suit stood near the crackling cedar. Long before her worldly emergence she was punished. The aunt walked over to the trunk, pulled out a movable eagle wing, and attached it to her left arm. Controlled by a mechanical contraption held in the right hand, the pulleys and small wires creaked as the spotted eagle wing was stretched out, mimicking flight.
Thus on a summer afternoon amid the insects’ song— Darken them, darken them, for heing so hold as to walk in the fiery suns light— the erroneous christening of a seal occurred.
Rose Many Nickel was eight that year in 1938 when they met up with a seal on Half Moon Beach that went on to become known within the family as “Dam Monster.” The name came about as a result of a major misunderstanding between the white fishermen and them. Sure, she was there on Half Moon Beach with her sisters, including her brother and cousin under the care of Jane Ribbon, their mute and facially deformed chaperone. In fact, they participated in the whole affair, but there was no: monster to speak of.
In the “Local Comical EVents” section of the Why Cheer News-Herald, one of the fishermen reported “the seal woman waddled out of the water, grew legs and arms, and began chasing after the Indian girls.” In the “Local Crimes and Jail Sentences” section, the fishermen were arrested that same night for intoxication, but the story of their seal woman sighting was received as a joke.
As the years dragged on and as the story became more far-fetched and embarrassing, Rose disassociated herself from the whole affair. In doing so, she was denying her own initiation as a premiere medicine woman. To the closest relatives and friends, however, she said they had been diving for clams in an area where summers previous the family had done well. Except on this occasion a seal, whether real or imagined, sacred or evil, chose to pop to the rivers surface, glistening under the sun in its sleek blackness. . . .
The Many Nickel family resided near the riverbottoms of the Iowa and Swanroot Rivers. The father, Nelson Many Nickel, was the most famous pearl diver in eastern Iowa; he also happened to be an Indian. Accordingly, his six daughters were taught to dive for clams early on. It was a way of living. The Many Nickel name on strings of pearls was highly sought after. Pearls for necklaces and clamshell buttons were traded for household materials, like nails, boards, pots, pans, and food, as well as school clothes.
As the daughters got older, however, the father was compelled to stay home and clean the pearls. It wasn’t respectful to see the bodies of his partially clothed daughters on their pearl-diving excursions. Between the parents it was agreed that when wet blouses began to cling to their growing breasts, a female chaperone would accompany them. The mother, Esther Many Nickel, with other things to do, like cooking, sewing, and selling beadwork sometimes on old Lincoln Highway 30, called upon her mothers relative, Jane Ribbon, to guide and watch the girls.
Jane Ribbon was a facially deformed mute and a recluse. She was quite trustworthy, though she rarely ventured out into the tribal community or anywhere else. Except for her elderly caretaker’s immediate family, no one knew how to communicate with her, much less look at her without being intimidated. It took years of practice to accomplish either task. During their summers as girls, Esther and Jane went on pearl-diving and fishing excursions. Whenever they met people on the paths, both whites and Indians would stand to the side, look away in respect and fear, and let them pass. Esther and her elderly aunt never thought of Jane as “Encumbrance.” Instead they accepted her presence as a blessing from the Well-Known Twin Brother.
“That’s why she can swim and dive like a muskrat,” they would say with hand gestures, comparing her to the one who dove into the ocean and retrieved a pawful of mud for the Well-Known Twin Brother, the mud that shaped the Second Earth.
“The muskrat is a hideous thing to look at,” Jane would signal angrily from the corner of the herb- and hat-cluttered room.
“That’s all, though,” they would return, emphasizing a muskrat could not watch and cook for babies as well as she could. Nor could a muskrat sew floral designs in appliqué and get high prices from white collectors.
In an effort to make the public at ease with her, and her with herself, they mail-ordered the latest hat styles of the season from CM. Marshall’s catalog. But Jane Ribbon preferred to stay in the dimness of Aunt Sophia’s old home.
It wasn’t productive arguing in sign language with a muskrat-resenting mute obsessed by her own misfortune. It was frustrating to stand in the shadows in a flurry of arm and hand gestures. If Jane looked away, the meaningless arms flailed. Sometimes Esther’s elderly aunt ended up hitting herself accidentally, and she would hold her poked eye and weep.
For the Many Nickel family, Jane Ribbon was a lifetime friend and companion. In fact, she frequently baby-sat the girls while their parents hunted for pearls. They all learned to communicate with her in sign language developed by their wise, elderly aunt Sophia, who foresaw physical abuse and starvation for Jane were she to be institutionalized. They unanimously concurred Jane wasn’t crazy. Her features merely took getting used to, but not if one knew her from infancy. Although public-shy, Jane was unusually fashion-conscious. In fact, Jane introduced hints of Western civilization to the girls through her impressive mail-order catalogs. In the dank half-lit corner of her room, Jane modeled clothes. Enthralled with her presence in shiny red high heels and frilly skirts, they were “mute-sensitized” long before schooling at Weeping Willow Elementary. Jane, of course, graciously declined any suggestion to pose in full daylight.