Opawana sat motionless looking eastward to where the trail came out of the marsh surrounding Mascouten Bay. Even his horse seemed to sense the tension and did not so much as swat his luxurious chestnut tail at the buzzing flies. The motion of a single rider had attracted his attention long before he could make out who or what the rider was. By the time he could see the cloth bandana holding back long hair and the single feather distinctively in the front, rather than the rear, to mark him as Shawnee, fully nine other riders had come out of the head-high grass. Once he was certain of their number he turned to the young brave beside him and said, “Chaubenee, go back to the village and tell Spotka what we’ve seen coming. I’ll wait here.”
“Yes, Father,” came the voice, oddly deep and full for one so young. He turned his horse sharply, causing Opawana to bark, “Slowly, Son. Slowly until you are out of sight. Only then put on speed.” The order was given in his usual commanding way, but he offered a small smile to his son.
In many ways, Chaubenee was so clearly his mother’s child. He had none of his father’s distinctly Ottawa features—thin, hawklike face and nose, lithe body, and severe demeanor. The one facial feature he shared with his father was the eyes, overlarge like a young fawn’s. Other than that, he was all Seneca, his mother’s tribe. Huge, powerful shoulders, thick waist and torso, full lips and nose, and boundless goodwill.
At five feet eight inches he was still three fingers shorter than his father, though at fully two hundred pounds he was already one of the strongest warriors in the village. Few, even those Opawana’s age, would wrestle with young Chaubenee. But in what counted most, character, he was a copy of his father. Fearless in combat and counsel, Chaubenee moved through life as a force with which others must contend. At only fifteen, he had become an extraordinary young man.
Opawana watched Chaubenee go, then turned and watched the Shawnee grow larger as they came toward him. He did not think they were trouble. There was no conflict between the Potawatomi and Shawnee. Unless this group is a small lead party for a much larger expedition, they are certainly not here to do damage. But they are all young warriors—no women, no children, and no older men. You can never be certain with a party of young warriors. I’ll be happy if Spotka and a few warriors arrive before the Shawnee get within bowshot.
But Opawana wasn’t moving. He would show no fear or even concern and greet the Shawnee graciously as was expected.
As they came closer, he became even more assured of their peaceful intentions. They did not fan out in a way that would flank him. They stayed on the trail two abreast. The first two interested him. The leader was a man of about thirty years of age and clearly a warrior of authority. Opawana didn’t even need to hear him speak to know that. His carriage was extremely erect, giving him the appearance of more height than Opawana guessed he would show standing on the ground.
But it was the rider beside him who held Opawana’s attention. He was a younger, more muscular version of the lead warrior—Opawana guessed not more than eighteen years—with the same erect carriage and sense of self-confidence. It was the younger man’s eyes, though, that intrigued Opawana. His eyes were already studying Opawana as Opawana studied him. Neither hostile nor fearful, just learning. Even at this distance, his eyes were almost hypnotic.
Opawana heard the riders coming behind him. They came with shouts that were louder than the hoofbeats of their running horses. When they were almost to him, he heard the hoofbeats of their horses slow and fan out wide across the prairie. Opawana glanced to his left and right. There were perhaps twenty Potawatomi on either side of him. Chaubenee came up on his right, and he knew without looking that Spotka would be on his left. The Shawnee neither quickened their pace nor in any other way changed their approach. When they were within the length of a horse, the leader stopped and motioned his followers to fan out on either side of him as well.
Only when that was done and the two lines of horsemen faced one another did the Shawnee speak.
“Greetings to the Potawatomi of Mascouten Bay from the Shawnee nation. I am Chiksika, son of Pucksinwah and ward of Chiungalla. This is my younger brother,” he said, motioning to the young warrior with the expressive eyes, “Tecumseh.”
It was Spotka who responded. “I am Spotka, chief of this small Potawatomi village. I knew of your father. He had a great name among all the tribes of the Great Lakes. He led us thirteen years ago at the Battle of Point Pleasant against Lord Dunmore. With great courage and skill.”
Chiksika’s lips gave away nothing of his thoughts, but his eyes gave a small flicker of appreciation of the reverence paid to his father. “I carried him from battle that day and stuffed buzzard down into his wound but to no avail. As is the custom of the Shawnee when our war chief dies, his children are adopted by our Second Civil Chief. That was Chiungalla, and Tecumseh and I are his wards.”
“And what brings us the honor of your presence?” Spotka asked.
“We are not emissaries of our nation, Chief Spotka. We are merely here on a youthful journey.”
“Then you are welcome to our village. Come with us. We’ll take you to the miskahmiqui. Currently, we have no other visitors. There is room for all. This evening after you’ve rested, we will have a feast for the village. You can tell us more of your journey then.”
Spotka wheeled his horse, as did Opawana, and they led their guests into the Potawatomi village at Mascouten Bay.
* * * *
The coals in the long pits glowed bright red and periodically snapped small shoots of flame as fat dripped from the roasting deer spitted above. The pits were lined with bubbling iron pots filled with corn and beans sizzling to completion. Several hundred men, women, and children sat in small groups along the edges of the pits, warmed against the cool breeze flowing off the river curving slowly around the village. A three-quarter moon lit the whole area with enough light that all could see from the first firepit to the last.
Opawana sat with Spotka and a group of village elders. He had invited Chiksika and his younger brother, Tecumseh, to join them. Each of the other Shawnee had been invited to one or another group of diners. Normally, each family would dine on their own, but tonight Spotka had ordered a village feast for the sole purpose of letting all hear the young Shawnee’s story. Spotka rose from the blanket on which he sat, stepped to the nearest pit, and banged loudly on one of the iron pots with the flat of his tomahawk. Slowly conversation died and when all was still, Spotka spoke.
“You all know we have been honored with a visit from ten fine young Shawnee warriors. The Shawnee have ever been our friends and allies. They have stood first in line as the Shemanese, the white soldiers with long knives that hang from their belt to their ankles, have come down the Spaylaywitheepi River from the other side of the mountains. In the beginning the Shemanese were British. Now, it appears, it is their younger brothers of the Thirteen Fires that come seeking our land.”
There was a general grumbling. Spotka waited until he had silence to continue. “This group is led by Chiksika, eldest son of the well-remembered and admired war chief of the Shawnee, Pucksinwah, who led us, as well as the Miami, Delaware, Opawana’s Ottawa, and his own Shawnee in the Battle of Point Pleasant against Lord Dunmore’s invasion.”
There were shouts of acclamation and again Spotka waited for silence. “This afternoon, he told me their visit was merely a ‘youthful journey.’ I said only after he had rested would I ask him to tell us of this ‘youthful journey.’ Chiksika and his party have rested and spent the evening drinking with us, and I think it is time, before we eat, for all of us to hear their story.”
And with a nod to his guest, he said, “Chiksika, tell us all.” And Spotka sat back down beside Opawana.
Chiksika rose with easy grace from his cross-legged position and when at full height took two steps backward until he was at the edge of the light and could face all two hundred villagers.
“Thank you, Spotka, and thank you, Potawatomi, for your grace and hospitality. You know by now that we are ten young warriors. I the oldest and my brother, Tecumseh, the youngest. We travel to meet all our neighbors, both those who are allies and those who are not, in the entire Great Lakes region and then south to the tribes of Tennessee and Alabama. We do it now because all of our lives we have had to stay close to home and be at war, or ready for war, with the Shemanese. We have not had the usual opportunities young men do to get to know those around us. But now we have a small window of time in which to do so, and we plan to use it.
“Let me explain why I say ‘small window.’ When I was five years old, long before the coming of the Thirteen Fires, in a time when we were asked to think of the King of England as our ‘Great Father,’ he proclaimed that none of his white subjects could cross the Appalachian Mountains, everything on this side of them being honored as Indian lands. Then only five years later, the British declared that we, all of us, were subjects of the Iroquois Confederacy.”
There was general noise of objection and anger. Chiksika was content to wait for the noise to subside, knowing the etiquette that a speaker be allowed to speak.
“I don’t say it is right, my brothers. I just say it is.” He paused momentarily. “Within a moon of the British declaring our land belonged to the Iroquois, rather than to us, the Iroquois conveniently sold all of ‘their land’ west of the Appalachians to the British. We hear the price was ten thousand pounds sterling. A considerable sum.
“Before the year was out, Sir William Johnson himself, the King’s agent to all his red subjects, came to the Shawnee and told us that all whites were forbidden from marking trees by cutting chips out of the bark—their way of showing personal ownership. Johnson said we had the right to kill any we caught doing it. The land was the King’s and the King’s only. No white individuals were allowed to own it.
“Less than five years later the leaders of the Thirteen Fires have sent parties to survey, that is, to measure and drive stakes in Mother Earth’s heart, so she can be divided into small pieces and sold. Mother Earth made a slave to men!”
Again Chiksika waited for the roar of anguish to subside before he continued. “That is what his surveyors did all down the Spaylaywitheepi River, along both north and south shores, as they were ordered. And in the year of my father’s death the King sent Lord Dunmore’s army down the Spaylaywitheepi to invade our land for the sin of killing surveyors, which the King’s agent, Sir William Johnson, had instructed us was our right.
“Within two years of the Battle of Point Pleasant, the Thirteen Fires rebelled from their Great Father, and a Virginian named George Rogers Clark formed an army of Kentuckians and captured most of the British forts south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River. The Virginia fire declared the land theirs and called it the Illinois County of Virginia. Shortly, the armies of the Thirteen Fires defeated the King’s armies. The Virginia fire gave the lands conquered by Clark to the government of all the fires: America, as they now call themselves.
“But the Americans tell us not to worry. They say that just this year they have made a law they call the ‘Northwest Territory Act,’ which says no Indian lands may be taken without our consent. But at the same time the Shemanese have opened a ‘land office’ in Louisville, Kentucky, to accept the claims of whites for Indian land. This ‘Northwest Territory Act’ was said to have stopped the pressure from whites trying to steal our lands. But tell me, Brothers, do you think it will?”
There was a roar of “NOOO!” from two hundred voices.
“You are right. Of course, it will not. But we have some time to prepare before war starts again. And our way of preparing is to come to know all of our neighbors. To find out in what ways they are like the Shawnee and in what ways they are different. Perhaps we can learn from each other and maybe become stronger together.
“Before I sit down and let the women slice the deer and ladle up the corn and beans, let me say one more thing about why we have time.”
Chiksika looked down at Spotka, a look of real affection on his face. “About one thing Spotka said, he is in error.”
Opawana saw a startled look cross his chief’s face as he held his breath in anticipation of what would come next.
“I am not my father’s oldest son. I am the oldest born of his wife. But when I was fifteen my father captured a boy in Virginia. He was two years older than I and an odd white in many ways. When my father’s party came on the boy, he was armed and had his ten-year-old brother with him. The armed Virginia boy knew he could kill one of the party. He also knew if he did, both he and his brother would be killed in retaliation. So, he made an offer. He would give up his gun and come with the Shawnee to whatever fate awaited him if Pucksinwah would let his brother go. It was agreed.
“All the way up the New River and down the Spaylaywitheepi, the white lad took whatever abuse was heaped upon him. He tried to learn our language, and once he had a few words, he made it clear he wanted to be adopted. He wanted to be Shawnee. My father liked him and thought he might do so. But when the war party got back to our village, the white boy had to do what all captives must do—run a gauntlet. Three hundred villagers lined up with switches, sticks, and in some cases, limbs, formed two lines about five feet apart, the lines ending at the pole in front of the miskahmiqui. If the captive got to the pole alive, my father agreed to adopt him. The white youth was very fast and quick and had strength and courage. He ran like a bat chasing mosquitoes. He took some blows—I know because I hit him with a raspberry vine than left nettles on his hip—but he dodged most. It looked like he would reach the post. When he was within twenty feet of his goal, a warrior armed with a small tree branch stepped into his running lane and swung full force at his head. The youth ducked the blow, wrenched the limb from the warrior’s hand, knocked him down with it, and raced to the pole. We all cheered his courage wildly.
“My father adopted him. His name is Blue Jacket, and he is now one of our most revered warriors. I think someday he may replace our father as war chief of the Shawnee. After we heard about the new Northwest Territory Act, Blue Jacket went to Kentucky by himself to the home of one of our fiercest opponents. He risked immediate death in doing so. But he still has some skill with his native tongue. They worked out a prisoner swap. It was not easy and it did not go without problems, but the Shawnee returned all prisoners who had not been adopted and the whites returned all their captives, including my nephew Spemica Lawba. We will have peace for a while. I think perhaps two or three years.
“And so, for two or three years, my friends and I will have a youthful journey and hope to learn much that will help us in the battles to come. Much we hope to learn from the Potawatomi.”