People of the Thunder (North America's Forgotten Past) (3 page)

Two Petals stared down at the wasted corpse. “Where are his souls?” She looked around, curious now as she cataloged the various bodies supine on the pole racks. Some were swollen with gas, others barely more than skeletons.

“That’s what I brought you here to see. The souls are all around you, waiting. If you clear yourself of the noise made by the living, you will be able to recognize them.”

She gestured to the bodies. “What will the Yuchi do with them?”

“When the time is right, the High Priest will slice what little flesh remains from the bones. He will pick away the loose tendons, strip off the scalp and any clinging tissue. Once the bones are cleaned, they will be Blessed, tied together, and given to the family for final burial in one of their mounds. Or maybe laid to rest in a place where the souls of the dead will remain close by and can help protect the living from the dangers in the Spirit world.”

She tried to quiet her revulsion. As she did, she could make out the faintest yellow-orange objects, like dim lights glowing along the walls. Others hovered near the ceiling.

“Yes, you begin to see. Those are the souls of the dead.”

“Why did you bring me here? I am not of these people. Why would my souls wish to lurk about watching my body rot? Who would I want to protect?”

“Exactly.”
Deer Man smiled.
“I wanted you to see how your body would end up should you fail to fulfill your Visions.”

“You mean if I don’t find my husband?”

Deer Man smiled.
“He will find you when the time is right. It is, however, your decision whether to go to him, or not. People fear him for a reason, and it will take an extraordinary woman to go willingly into his lair. I wanted you to understand what would happen if you gave in to fear, temptation, or desire. You dare not love, Contrary. You can only surrender yourself to the future.”

She reached down, placing a finger on the sunken flesh inside the bowl of Chigger’s hip. It gave, soft but leathery. When she withdrew her finger, the depression remained. She wondered what his souls thought of her poking him like that. Looking up, she saw two of the glowing lights drop, as though in concern. “Oh, I understand just fine, Deer Man.”

“Are you sure?”

“I just have to take the most terrible man alive into my bed. And keep him from discovering what is happening right beneath his nose.”

And if I fail, we will all die, and end up in a charnel house just like this one.

From Rainbow City, one could paddle up the Tenasee until it made its great eastern bend. By ascending one of the several tributaries that drained from the south, travelers could canoe their way up to the headwaters, then portage across the densely forested hills to the Origins of the Black Warrior River. Tumbling through the hills, the Black Warrior flowed south until it reached the fall line. There, after the last rapids, the river settled into a broad floodplain. The broken, forested uplands gave way to rolling country. The current grew lazy as the Black Warrior pursued its sinuous path toward the gulf. Back swamps, thick with bald cypress and tupelo, were dotted with canebrakes; and yellow lotus, cattails, and duckweed thrived. Hanging moss draped from low branches. Higher ground—on the terraces below the hills—with sandy, better-drained soils had long been home to the Albaamaha People.

It was said that the Albaamaha had come from deep in the earth, following the roots of the great World Tree to reach the earth’s surface. There, half the people emerged from one side of the root to become the Albaamaha, the other half—separated from their brethren—called themselves the Koasati.

From the time of the emergence, the Albaamaha had farmed the Black Warrior terraces. In the dark forests of the surrounding uplands they hunted deer, wild turkey, and other forest game. The woodlands—rich in hickory,
oak, and persimmons—had provided bountiful nut harvests from which the Albaamaha rendered food and oil. From the swamps they had taken roots, cane, waterfowl, and other game. The river provided fish, freshwater mussels, and clams. Up and down the river, the Albaamaha had built their bent-pole houses, thatched them with shocks of local grasses, and warred and squabbled among themselves for generations.

Then the Sky Hand had come—a Mos’kogean People from the great Father Water to the west. The Sky Hand had made their way down the Black Warrior River, following an advance of warriors. At a high bluff that dominated a bend in the river, they made their new home. Immediately they began the construction of Split Sky City. Many Albaamaha welcomed the Sky Hand, brokering alliances with the newcomers as a means of settling age-old vendettas against surrounding villages. Cunning, and skilled in political manipulations, the Sky Hand pitted one Albaamaha village against another. Too late, the Albaamaha realized that their new benefactors had come not to share the land, but to rule it. Some Albaamaha resisted. The poorly organized farmers and hunters were no match for trained and disciplined Sky Hand warriors. Within a generation, any Albaamaha resistance had been crushed, and the Sky Hand moved quickly to take advantage of Albaamaha labor in the construction of their great new city overlooking the Black Warrior River. Within twenty years land had been cleared, surveyed, earthworks erected, and the first palaces and temples built.

Nor did they stop there, but expanded up and down the river, building new settlements and installing chiefs to oversee the Albaamaha lands. The Albaamaha had nowhere to go. To the west lay the intimidating Chahta, another invading Mos’kogee nation. To the south, the Pensacola brooked no intrusion into their territory. Though cousins, the Koasati resisted the temptation to
accept refugees, worried enough about holding their own lands. In the east, the Ockmulgee and Talapoosie peoples were just as dangerous as the Sky Hand. Going north into the Yuchi lands was unthinkable. The Yuchi had raided the Albaamaha for generations, taking spoils, scalps, and slaves.

Resigned but resentful, the Albaamaha had no choice but to accept their new overlords. The Sky Hand, for their part, provided protection from raids, enforced peace between the Albaamaha villages, and ensured order and security. In return the Albaamaha were required to expand their farms—the majority of the produce to be delivered as tribute to the high minko, or supreme ruler, of the Sky Hand. All the backbreaking work—building, logging, carrying, and earth moving—was done by Albaamaha labor.

The greatest accomplishment of Albaamaha sweat and tears was the construction of Split Sky City, a complex of high palaces, Council Houses, and Temples built atop large earthen mounds and laid out according to moiety and clan, each in its place. Hickory Moiety and its clans lay to the east, Old Camp Moiety to the west. A great central plaza was dominated by the tchkofa, or Council House. The entire city was surrounded on three sides by a defensive wall of pitch-pine logs, four times the height of a man. On the north, where Split Sky City overlooked the river, the slopes below the bluff were cut sheer to prohibit any kind of organized assault. Gangs of Albaamaha had logged the surrounding countryside, clearing forests for fields and delivering wood, cane, and thatch to teams who constructed Split Sky City’s edifices.

Once built, a city consumes like a voracious beast. A steady stream of Albaamaha bore food, water, firewood, clay, stone, thatch, and wood into the city. Each fall, at harvest, lines of Albaamaha carried basket after basket of corn, beans, squash, sunflower seeds, lotus
root, goosefoot, and forest nuts to the elevated granaries. So, too, came fish, clams, wildfowl, and meat. Any surplus such as tanned hides, matting, cordage, shells, feathers, or other things the Sky Hand might fancy were brought to Sky Hand City to be traded for brightly dyed fabrics, ceremonial ceramics, talismans, or special services such as Healing or divination that the Sky Hand had mastered.

The Sky Hand specialized in higher pursuits such as sculpting, ceramics, the arts of religion and Healing, politics, games, and most of all, war. Among all the peoples in the Southeast, Sky Hand warriors were the most highly trained, disciplined, and deadly. Neighboring peoples, even the irascible Yuchi, quickly came to the conclusion that maintaining peaceful relations with the Sky Hand tended to be the sanest course of action. At least most of the time. Power, after all, had to be kept in balance. Insults of any kind required immediate and violent response. Failure to do so affected the Spiritual health of the people. Any sign of weakness invited exploitation by the chaotic forces of the red Power.

The notion of Power preoccupied the Mos’kogee peoples. While Creation was separated into the Sky World, Earth, and Underworld, the Power that flowed through it consisted of the white Power of order, peace, serenity, contemplation, happiness, and security. Its equal and opposite was red: the Power of chaos, war, creativity, procreation, lust, ambition, and desire. While the great Priests—called
Hopaye
by the Sky Hand—taught that all Power had to be kept in balance, many utilized a specific Power for their own ends.

One such man was the Sky Hand war chief. His full name was Smoke Shield Mankiller, of the Chief Clan of the Hickory Moiety. As the high minko’s nephew, War Chief Smoke Shield was next in line to assume the high minko’s position. Smoke Shield needed two things: The
first was for his uncle, High Minko Flying Hawk, to die, or step aside. That it would happen was but a matter of time. Second, but of even greater importance, Smoke Shield needed confirmation by the Sky Hand Council. That was key. The high minko might rule, but only with the assent of the Council. This was made up of the clan chiefs from both the Hickory and Old Camp moieties.

Nothing a man did was accomplished without the Blessing of Power, let alone being confirmed as high minko. Smoke Shield had long ago made his bargain with the red Power. In return for his devotion, it had granted him each and every one of his desires.

Smoke Shield had little use for the prattling teachings of the
Hopaye.
The current one was a Panther Clan man called Pale Cat. Dedicated to tranquility, order, and reason, Pale Cat served the white Power. He and Smoke Shield had despised each other since they were boys. Things had grown worse in the years since Smoke Shield had married Heron Wing, Pale Cat’s sister. Smoke Shield had used red Power to win the woman. Lies and manipulation had allowed him to prevail over his long-gone brother, Green Snake, but in the end, Smoke Shield emerged victorious, having caused his brother’s exile, claimed the woman Green Snake loved, and secured succession to the high minko’s panther-hide chair. Smoke Shield had an ugly scar that marred his head as proof that Power never gave its gifts freely.

As he considered that, Smoke Shield fingered the deep scar, remembering the blow his brother had given him. But for it, he would have been a handsome man. Then again, why did a man need beauty when he was muscular, and quick of mind and body? Smoke Shield was in the process of living through his twenty-sixth winter. Despite the ugly scar, his face was tattooed with a Chief Clan bar across his cheeks. Forked-eye designs had been tattooed around each eye—the one on the left
a little distorted by his long-healed wound. This day he wore his hair in a tight bun at the back of his head. Three little white arrows, the highest honor bestowed upon a warrior, had been stuck through his hair. A single warrior’s forelock hung down over his forehead and was decorated with three gleaming white beads. He wore an eagle-feather cape over his bare shoulders, and a white warrior’s apron had been tied at his waist, its long tail hanging suggestively down between his knees.

Smoke Shield stood at the northeastern margin of Split Sky City’s great plaza. Just to his left the high minko’s mound rose up in a flat-topped pyramid of earth to support the mighty palace where he and Uncle Flying Hawk held sway. Off to his right, and slightly behind him, the tishu minko, a man called Seven Dead, chief of the Raccoon Clan, had his palace. The plaza itself was flat, dominated by the stickball grounds that ran east to west just behind the red-and-white-striped Tree of Life—a pole that represented the great tree at the Spiritual center of their world. To either side of that were clay chunkey courts where stone disks were rolled before men attempted to spear them with lances.

Despite the throngs of passing people, busy with their lives, Smoke Shield’s attention was fixed on the line of wooden squares that stood empty along the plaza margin. He stood before one in particular. Made of hickory logs, the uprights set deeply into the earth, it was one of five. The square was composed of two uprights with crosspieces lashed across the top and bottom. It left a man-sized frame that would support a human body. Captives were tied inside the open square—wrists to each of the upper corners, ankles to the lower—so that their naked, spread-eagled bodies could be beaten, burned, mutilated, and otherwise abused.

On either side, Smoke Shield could see the other empty squares. Not so long ago, men had hung from them. He frowned, thinking of the captive who had died within
the empty frame before him. His name had been Screaming Falcon. He’d once been the White Arrow Chahta’s most promising young war chief.