Shaman, Robert Shea [new ebook reader .txt] 📗

clasps on his arms and silver bracelets around his wrists. All these things had been supplied by Owl Carver or traded for by Sun Woman. If he had to speak he might at least hope his words would be greeted with respect.

Redbird pressed against him, and her nearness warmed him. Flames danced over the pile of blackened logs in the center of the British Band's winter camp. Light gray smoke rose from the fire, the same color as the blanket of cloud that hid the afternoon sun.

Fear twisted its knife in White Bear's stomach. He did not want to tell this assembly what he knew. Most of them would hate him. The chiefs and braves and warriors of the British Band, Black Hawk and all the rest, would never forgive him. Owl Carver would feel betrayed.[211]

Let them settle this without me.

But he knew it was a forlorn hope. When Owl Carver had asked him what he learned in his vision, he had answered evasively. And now Owl Carver was counting on him.

Around the fire sat the council of seven chiefs who governed the Sauk and Fox tribes, including Jumping Fish, Broth and Little Stabbing Chief. Beside them sat He Who Moves Alertly, the friend of the long knives, the war chief who had never made war. Prominent braves like Wolf Paw sat with them. The older and the younger shamans of the British Band sat there, Owl Carver and White Bear.

And there was another shaman at the fire as well, Flying Cloud, better known as the Winnebago Prophet. He was a broad man with a wolfskin thrown over his shoulders. Unlike nearly all the men of the tribes that lived along the Great River, he had a thick black mustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth. A silver nose ring rested on the mustache. He was head man of a Winnebago village called Prophet's Town, a day's journey up the Rock River from Saukenuk.

In the quiet that greeted Black Hawk, White Bear heard, over the crackle of the fire, the rattle of the war chief's bone bracelets as he held out his hand.

"I only want to go back to the land that belongs to me and dwell there and raise corn there. I will not be cheated. I will not be driven out."

Black Hawk did not have a pleasing speaking voice; it was hoarse and grating. But the assembly listened intently, because for over twenty summers there had been no greater warrior among the Sauk and Fox.

"With this hand I have killed seventy and three of the long knives. Every Sauk and Fox brave, every Winnebago and Potawatomi and Kickapoo, can do as much. Yes, we know the long knives outnumber us. But we can show them that if they want to steal Saukenuk from us, they will have to trade too many of their young men's lives for it.

"Last summer the long knives surrounded us and drove us out of Saukenuk. But that was because we were not ready to fight, and some of us were not willing to fight."

Black Hawk looked pointedly at He Who Moves Alertly, who sat expressionless, as if unaware of Black Hawk's disapproving gaze. His face was round and ruddy, like the full moon when it first appears[212] above the horizon. He wore his glossy black hair long under an impressive buffalo headdress with gleaming horns, and had wrapped himself in a buffalo-hide robe painted with sunbursts.

Black Hawk said, "Next summer, it will be different. I have had messages from the Winnebago and the Potawatomi promising to help us if the long knives attack us. The Chippewa, up in the north, say they want to help us."

A burning log split in two with a noise like a gunshot, and the halves fell deeper into the fire with a shower of sparks.

Looking over the heads of those seated near him, White Bear saw columns of smoke from a dozen or more other campfires rising into the late afternoon sky. Around those campfires, feasting and gossiping, sat most of the people of the British Band and their guests from other Sauk and Fox bands, as well as some Winnebago, Potawatomi and Kickapoo braves. What was being decided here now would mean life or death to all who chose to follow these leaders.

Black Hawk said, "The pale eyes say we sold our land. I say that land cannot be sold. Earthmaker gives land to those who need it to live on, to grow food on, to hunt on, as he gives us air and water.

"The land has been good to us. It has given us game and fish, fruit and berries. It has let us grow our squash, beans, pumpkins and corn on it, and bury our mothers and fathers in it. The pale eyes are destroying the land, cutting down the trees, fencing off the prairie and plowing it up. The land is the mother of us all. When a man's mother is dishonored, he must fight. Earthmaker will give us this victory, because he is our father and he loves us."

With a chill that did not come from the air, White Bear remembered the words of the Turtle: Earthmaker bestows evil as well as good on his children.

White Bear prayed his own prayer to Earthmaker: that he not be asked to speak to this gathering.

Black Hawk lifted his rasping voice in a shout. "I, Black Hawk, raise the war whoop!"

He threw out his chest, lifted his head, and let loose an ululating cry that seemed to pierce the very clouds that hung over the camp. Wolf Paw, Iron Knife, Little Crow, Three Horses and a dozen other Sauk and Fox braves leaped up, waving rifles, tomahawks, bows and arrows, scalping knives, screaming their battle cries. Owl Carver beat furiously on a drum painted with a picture of the Hawk spirit.[213]

The Winnebago Prophet lunged to his feet and joined the outcry, his gestures so wild and his shouts so loud that he almost seemed to be competing with Black Hawk.

Redbird spoke softly, close by White Bear's ear. "They are drunk on war."

The outcry died down. Black Hawk crossed his arms over his chest to show that he had finished speaking. The Winnebago Prophet remained standing and raised his arms.

"I have come to promise Black Hawk and his braves that if he goes to Saukenuk and the long knives attack him, the warriors of Prophet's Town will help them to fight back."

The chiefs and braves seated around the fire greeted this with much stamping and clapping. White Bear glanced at He Who Moves Alertly, who sat a quarter of the way around the circle from him. The face under the buffalo headdress was as still as if carved from wood.

Flying Cloud said, "I have sent messages to all the tribes that live near the Great River—Winnebago, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, Chippewa. When Black Hawk raises the tomahawk, they will raise the tomahawk too. And I have had a message from our allies of old, the British in Canada, who say the Americans have done us a great wrong, and we should not give up any more land to them. If American long knives attack us, the British long knives will come to our aid. With ships, with big guns, with rifles, powder and shot and food for us, with hundreds of red-coat soldiers. Now is the best of times to tell the long knives they cannot push us any further. Let all who are truly men take to the trail of war with Black Hawk!"

White Bear sensed deadly falsehood in the words of the Winnebago Prophet. When White Bear was in New York City he had heard many times that the enmity between Americans and British was a thing of the past. White Bear did not believe that the British up there in Canada had any intention of getting into a war between whites and Indians in Illinois. But how could he prove that what Flying Cloud said was untrue?

With a cry of "Ei! Ei!" Wolf Paw shook his rifle over his head. He snapped it to his shoulder and fired it with a deafening boom and a red flash and a big cloud of white smoke.

Someday he may wish he had not wasted that powder.

As White Bear and Redbird sat silently, braves all around them[214] were up and shrieking, waving rifles and tomahawks, thrusting out arms and legs in the movements of a war dance. Owl Carver and some of the chiefs slapped the palms of their hands against the taut, painted deerskin of their drumheads.

A few other men did not join the shouts of approval, among them the round-faced He Who Moves Alertly.

White Bear sat with his fists clenched in his lap, wondering whether anyone would notice that the youngest of the three shamans among them was not shouting for war. He felt Redbird's hand grip his arm tightly, helping him to feel stronger.

Only to Redbird had White Bear told all of his vision. She shared his fear that if the British Band followed Black Hawk to war they would be destroyed, and she had insisted on sitting with him at the council fire. White Bear knew it was not the custom for a wife to sit with her husband at a council, but she had argued and pleaded until he had given in and brought her with him.

Her presence beside him both comforted him and made him uneasy. Owl Carver, when he came to the fire, had stared at his daughter, frowned and looked away. Wolf Paw had eyed them and smiled scornfully.

As the tumult inspired by the Winnebago Prophet quieted down, He Who Moves Alertly looked around the circle of chiefs and braves, his eyes pausing at anyone who had not joined the outcry for war. His gaze met White Bear's for an instant, and he nodded almost imperceptibly. White Bear had an eerie feeling that He Who Moves Alertly knew what was in his mind.

The chief who favored the long knives stood up.

A sullen muttering spread through the men around the council fire. Most of those who agreed with He Who Moves Alertly had stayed away from this council. White Bear felt admiration for anyone who could look so confident, standing before a crowd in which so many were against him.

"War is loud, and peace is quiet," He Who Moves Alertly began. "But peace keeps us alive. The real way to defeat the long knives is to stay alive."

His voice was deep and pleasant, and he smiled as if every man there were his friend.

"When is it right for a brave to go to war? When he must avenge himself on those who have done wrong to him. Black Hawk says[215] we should fight the pale eyes because they have stolen land from us. But I have seen the papers with the marks of our chiefs on them. Seven different times Sauk and Fox chiefs have made their marks on papers agreeing to give up all claim to the land east of the Great River. The long knives say our chiefs were paid in gold for the land."

As his benign gaze swept the assembly, he said, "It is right for a brave to go to war when he is strong enough to make war. He does not go because he wants to be killed, because he wants to leave his women and children unprotected. He knows he may die, but he does not look for death."

He Who Moves Alertly was no longer smiling. He touched his fingertips to his eyes, then raised his arms to the sky. "May Earthmaker strike me blind if I do not speak the truth.

"We are not strong enough to make war on the long knives. I have traveled in the lands of the Americans, all the way to the eastern sea. I have seen so many long knives that I could not count them all."

White Bear felt more and more uneasy as he listened. Black Hawk and all the other braves of the British Band looked on He Who Moves Alertly as an enemy. But White Bear knew that the chief in the buffalo headdress was speaking the truth. Perhaps not about the treaties, but surely about the vast numbers of long knives.

White Bear saw again the thousands of blue-uniformed soldiers he had seen marching in New York on the Fourth of July a year ago, and the other thousands he had seen in his vision, fighting and dying but still advancing on some strange battlefield.

He Who Moves Alertly said, "Owl Carver and Black Hawk say the Potawatomi and Winnebago will aid the British Band, and other tribes from farther away. I say none of them will help. This quarrel over Saukenuk is not their quarrel, and they have made their own peace with the long