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

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past)
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“Power? You get rich?”
“No, I put my souls in order.”
“You mean your soul.”
“No, souls. Like the Ancestors, I have two. Some, like the Yuchi, thought they had as many as four.”
“People only have one. I learned that in church.”
“Then answer me this: Why do people make those little shrines along the roads where someone dies; and then they place more flowers on the grave, and keep a dead person’s possessions? Can the soul be in all those places at once? You know, hanging around the side of the road, at the grave, and in Grandma’s old music box?”
“The soul goes to God,” he said with authority.
“Then why are people driven to place memorials in so many places? If it’s not for the different souls of the dead, who’s it for?”
He screwed his face up, trying to find an answer.
“Look, uh … What’s your name?”
“Joshua.”
“Look, Joshua, you’ve got to learn to think on your own. That’s a gift Breath Giver has imparted to each one of us. All of your life, people like Mr. Roberts are going to be telling you things. Some are true, and some aren’t.” She paused. “I first came here fifty years ago, and I heard something, felt something, and it changed my life. Maybe that’s why you came today.”
“I came because it’s field day.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Maybe. Or perhaps it was Spirit Power that brought you here. Maybe you were sent here today, to meet me, to hear these things because somehow, in spite of all the noise from the radio, movies, and video games, you will remember. Sometime in the future, you’ll say, ‘That old Indian woman taught me to see the world differently.’ And all along, it was Power moving you. Don’t ever underestimate Power.”
“What’s Power if it isn’t money?”
“It’s the breath that God breathed into this entire marvelous Creation.”
She reached into her purse, removing a clay gorget on a string. She made these by the hundreds, pressing a blob of clay into a mold; then she fired the pieces and strung them on fishing line. This one was a simple cross contained in a circle.
He took it, frowning at the design.
“The circle is emblematic of the world. The cross portrays the four directions: east, south, west, and north. At the center burns the sacred fire that was given to us by God. You keep that. And years from now, when you hold it, you will remember this day. And, if you’re lucky, how it changed your life.”
He looked up at her as he ran his fingers over the clay relief. “Do you think this place changed a lot of lives?”
“Oh, yes. And when you start back to find your teacher, you look around at the mounds, at the open spaces. When you do, look back through time. If you can free your imagination, you’ll see those places full of people, with great buildings, and tall granaries. People
lived
here in all of the ways humans do. They loved, and fought, and died, and laughed, and cried.”
She looked at the boy, feeling a shift in time, her souls having the briefest glimpse of the past.
“Joshua, this was the home of my ancestors.” She spread her arms. “They did marvelous things! Terrible things, filled with blood and pain, and suffering. They took this land, and built a city while living in the fading shadow of Cahokia. If you close your eyes and smell, you can catch the odor of fire and smoke. Treachery occurred here, and undying love. Heroes and cowards walked this very soil. It was a center for
people.
Living, breathing human beings like you and me. Can you feel it? The blood and spirit, the chaos and beauty? Magic happened.” She pointed. “Just out there, in that river before you.”
“But it’s gone.”
“No, it lives. Only your city senses are closed to it.”
She hesitated, hearing the faint Song from the river. “And, Joshua, if you can empty your mind—cease listening like a white man—you will find that quiet place inside. When you do, you will hear their voices. Even today.”
He mumbled his thanks and walked away, his eyes fixed on the sacred-fire gorget she’d given him.
She turned back to the river. The current seemed to swell and shift, eddying sideways and around.
“Did he understand? Or is he lost like so many of these kids today? In the battle for his soul, will the video games win, or will he taste the elixir of Spirit Power? Will he ever take the time to find himself?”
The Song grew louder, and she squinted down at the water.
Something moved in the river, slipping along below the surface. Sunlight glittered on the shifting current, and she swore she saw rainbow colors sliding in the depths. Was that a sparkle of sunlight, or a great crystalline eye watching her?
“Is that your Song, Grandfather?”
The water swirled, sucked, and smoothed.
“Oh, what a story you could tell.”
The Singing grew fainter, and the thing was gone.
“M
akatok.”
In the Mos’kogee language it means, “It was said long ago.”
Makatok
is the word that starts all of our stories of Power, of prophecy, and legend. When a story is begun with
Makatok,
the audience knows that they must listen intently, that what is being told to them is not frivolous, but contains great lessons, truths, and portents for the conduct of their lives.
Makatok
is not a word that is used casually. It implies obligations from both the orator and the listener. You must understand: A story is more than just words; it has an existence of its own
—
a soul and presence that must be experienced and felt. A story lives, breathes, and has its own heartbeat. This must be respected.
When an orator begins his story with
Makatok
he places his audience on notice that what they are about to hear must be carefully considered, for it concerns the way they live, how they perceive their world and relate to the people, places, and things in it. It tells them that what they are about to hear has implications from the past, value for the present, and ramifications for the future.
Ah, I see the look of confusion in your eyes. Have you never considered that time is alive? Do you think the past dead? Is the present only the breath in your lungs? Are the rhythms of the future but fantasy to you?
Extend your senses; see through the eyes of the spiral. Time is relationships. The past spinning itself into the
present, weaving events that will form and color the textile of our future.
What? You need an example? Very well. In the eye of your souls, visualize an arrow in flight. Imagine it, shining in the sun, the keen point slicing the air. Hear the feathers hissing in the wind.
Can you imagine it? Good. Now, what does it mean, this arrow arcing through the sky?
To know, you must relive the intent of the archer who nocked this fletched shaft in a taut bowstring. You must sense the urgency in his heart when he drew the nock back to his ear. Were his souls possessed with fear of an untimely death? Anger at betrayal? Hatred for a despised enemy … or perhaps just the desperation of an empty belly? Only when you understand the archer can you either admire or fear the arrow’s flight. In this moment you can anticipate or rue its eventual impact as it finds or misses its intended target.
Ah, now you begin to see. The present began in the past. Everything, from the patterns of clouds in the sky, the path of a beetle across the dirt, the love in a father’s eyes, to the wails of a dying captive, was spun from decisions made in the past. Each will extend beyond this moment to the future where they will be played out. Close your eyes; sense the movement of time around you. It is inexorable, flowing like a great river through and around us. Can you not comprehend the majesty of it? Is it not one of the miracles of creation?
Nevertheless most of us muddle along, mired only in the present, involved with our mundane tasks. With each step we stare at the clinging mud beneath our feet instead of the glorious path ahead.
For that reason, the great stories begin with
Makatok
. The word tells you to open your souls and pay attention, to realize the marvel of what you are about to hear. Drop your preoccupations of the moment. Expand your understanding of the universe around you.
The momentous surrounds us. Stop and listen, learn, think, and see how decisions in the past fill the present and will forever change your future.
Such is the story I will now tell.
Makatok … .
A
harsh winter wind blew out of a midnight sky. It roared out of the frigid north and thrashed the brooding forest. The force of it bent trees, whipping their bare branches like angry lashes. Shrieking across the river, it drove a stiff chop against the shore. Curling waves sawed at the sandy beach, and spray whisked in gleaming droplets to soak the long dugout canoes pulled up on the bank. Racing up the bluff, the wind crested the heights and savaged the city.
Gust after gust worried thatch roofing, shook the corn cribs and drying racks, and hammered relentlessly at the intricately carved clan poles. Fingers of wind rolled baskets, whirled away matting, and flung streamers of ash and bits of detritus into the air. The high palisade with its square bastions and archers’ platforms trembled under the gale; bits of clay cracked and fell from the weft of dried vines woven between the vertical logs.
Perched atop its dominating mound, the high minko’s palace bore the worst of the storm’s brunt. Wind pulled at the tall building and ripped angrily at the tightly bundled thatch roof. It whistled against the ornate wooden statues of Eagle, Woodpecker, and Falcon that protruded from the peaked ridgepole.
Despite being built of deeply set logs, the great building shook and creaked. Gusts slipped through gaps and doorways. Eddies and currents ghosted along dark hallways and danced around cane-mat walls. The draft teased fabric door hangings and shivered the sacred
masks hanging from their strings. It touched bare flesh with a chill kiss.
The boys’ room opened off a central hallway. Embers cast a faint red glow from the puddled clay hearth. As the draft fluctuated, patterns shifted among the coals, gleaming and fading—like eyes staring from the Underworld.
The twins huddled on their pole-frame bed, arms around each other, eyes on the capricious patterns traced in the hearth. For the moment the mighty wind was forgotten. Father’s angry shout carried down the hallway.
Mother’s piteous “No” was followed by the meaty sound of a slap.
The boys flinched, eyes widening as they glanced fearfully at the doorway. In the reflected hearth light they watched the dark door hanging. The fabric swayed ever so slightly, teased by the icy breeze.
“Will
he
come?” one whispered.
“Hush, Acorn,” the other barely mouthed. “Don’t even think about him. Your thoughts might touch one of his souls. Might bring him here.”
Their twin faces made reddish disks in the dim light, eyes wide, dark, and liquid. Button noses over soft lips gave their expressions an impish quality added to by the tousled mats of their unkempt black hair. The blanket that hid their small bodies was intricately woven, covered with images of artistically rendered ducks and turtles. The bare poles beneath their bed frame gleamed like freshly skinned bone. Two toy bows, small quivers of arrows, and piles of rumpled clothing had been laid by the foot of the bed. On the wall behind them hung a magnificent wooden carving of Eagle Man. Each feather radiating from his wide-spread arms was intricately rendered. His nose became a curved beak, and twin rattlesnakes coiled in his hands. The gorget pendant on his breast was copper, as was the bilobed hairpiece with its distinctive arrow. The image wore a chief’s kilt, the long tail of it falling suggestively between his braced legs.
“Foul camp bitch!” The words carried down the hallway. “I’ll make you spread your legs for me!”
The boys cowered deeper into their blanket, Acorn closing his eyes as Mother screamed in response to a slapping blow.
“Please, Breath Maker, make him stop,” Acorn pleaded, a tear escaping the corner of his eye.
“Shhh!” Grape hissed. “If he comes, close your eyes. Play asleep.”
Acorn swallowed hard, hearing faint weeping from the room down the hall. “Where’s Hickory?”
“Sneaked out of here if he knows what’s good for him.” Grape tightened his arm around his brother. “Last time Father beat him half to death.”
“I thought Uncle was going to kill Father.”
“Uncle’s a coward,” Grape said hollowly.
“Is not.”
“Is.”
“Is not.”
“If he wasn’t a coward, he’d have driven Father off by now.”
Acorn didn’t respond as Mother’s half-choked scream was overwhelmed by a roaring gust of winter wind. After it passed, the twins could hear the familiar grunting as Father coupled with Mother. When it happened this way, her face would be bruised in the morning. Often she walked with an awkward, wide-legged gait, and they could see finger marks on her neck that she tried to hide with strings of beads. A brittleness would lie behind her eyes, like an old potsherd: fragile and easy to snap.
“I
won’t
share you with a dead man! Move for me, bitch!” Father cried angrily. “I said,
move
!”
Then, as if the world held its breath, the night went silent.
“Enough!” The voice wasn’t Mother’s, but higher, a squeal strained with rage, terror, and disbelief. Acorn could barely recognize Hickory’s voice. Was his older
brother mad to challenge Father when he was in this kind of mood?
“You little whelp!” Father bellowed. “Don’t you dare to—”
A snapping impact carried on the chill air.
Father screamed: the sound of it bloodcurdling.
Then the winter wind hammered the building with renewed fury.
For long moments the boys waited, arms about each other.
The hanging swayed as a dark form eased into the room. Grape gasped, clamping his eyes closed, his breathing too fast for a boy feigning sleep.
Help me, Breath Maker!
The silent prayer repeated in Acorn’s frightened souls.
The dark apparition stepped forward, short, slight of build, something heavy hanging from its right hand.
“Are you awake?” came the hesitant call.
“Hickory?” Acorn almost cried with relief. “What’s happened?”
Hickory stepped up to the bed, his form silhouetted by the glow from the firepit. He looked like a gangly bird, thin of limbs, his hair mussed. “I want you to run to Kosi Fighting Hawk’s. Go now. Hurry.”
“What about Father?”
“That’s why you’ve got to go now.”
“But if we—”
“Go
now
!” Hickory ordered in a voice strained beyond violence. They flung the blanket aside, feet slapping the packed clay floor of their room.
“Go!” Hickory cried.
“Here he comes!”
Acorn led the way, bolting into the hallway, turning left, and running across the fabric rugs underfoot. He jetted into the main room, barely aware of the intricate copper-covered reliefs of Horned Serpent, Cougar, and Woodpecker gleaming on the walls. The great stool where Father held sway was draped in cougar hides. Lines of human skulls hung in the rear, where a war
shield looked ruddy in the firelight. The central fire leaped and bent with the breeze that filtered through the plank door.
Acorn hit the door, throwing his weight against it. Grape was smart enough to reach up and throw the thong off its hook. They crashed through, flinging the door wide and charging out into the windswept night.
Powered by fear like he’d never known, Acorn raced to the gate in the high palisade and struggled with the heavy wooden gate. With Grape’s help, he managed to pull it aside far enough that he could wiggle through, Grape on his heels.
At the edge of the high stairs he paused to throw a look over his shoulder. A fierce gust of wind blew the gate wide. Through the portal, Acorn could see Hickory standing in the doorway, his shape outlined by the flickering fire. The object he held pulled his shoulder down with its weight.
“Hurry!” Grape cried, and began descending the wooden steps. Below them, Split Sky City was hidden in the night.
Acorn fixed the image of Hickory between his souls, identifying the thing that hung so heavily from his right hand. Then, Hickory turned, disappearing back inside. Acorn fixed his attention on the steps. The way down the high earthen mound was long and steep. In the darkness, battered by the chill wind, it was even more ominous.
Grape beat him to the plaza, and together they ran, bare feet hammering the trampled winter grass. Several bow shots to the east, Kosi Fighting Hawk’s palace stood like a shadow. Its earthen mound rose from the ground like a small mountain. Acorn made a face against the chill wind that shot ice into his naked body. He ran around the head of the steep ravine, breath tearing in his throat, straining his young legs. Grape’s body was a lighter blur in the darkness. Grape was always faster.
Acorn was winded; tears spurred by worry and fear
trickled down his cheeks. He rounded the square base of the earthen temple and staggered past the guardian posts—sculpted figures of Falcon, Hawk, and Turkey—that stood beside the stairs.
“Wait!” Acorn cried. “I’ve got to rest.”
Grape turned on the steps, his breath coming in gasps. “What if Father’s right behind us?”
“He’s not.”
“Where’s Hickory?”
Acorn jerked a nod back the way they’d come, forcing his trembling legs upward as he began the climb. “Hickory didn’t follow us,” he managed between breaths. “I saw him go back inside.”
“Father’s really … going to hurt us,” Grape managed. “He’s going to be so mad.”
“Hickory stayed behind.”
“Breath Maker save him … and us.”
“Please.”
“Father won’t forget we ran away.”
“I know.” Gods, could Kosi Fighting Hawk really protect them?
Acorn burst into tears as images played across his imagination. He could see the expression on Father’s face: implacable rage behind his dark eyes; cold fury in the set of his mouth; the way his jaw muscles would bunch under his tattooed cheeks as he used cane slats to whip them.
“Stop it!” Grape pleaded, as if the same visions were blazing in his little souls. He, too, was sobbing as they clambered slowly up the worn wooden steps. Shivering from cold, scared like they’d never been, the boys finally reached the wooden gate in the palisade that surrounded the flat top of the Raccoon Clan’s high mound. To their surprise, the wind had pushed the heavy door ajar, leaving a gap wide enough for two skinny little boys to wriggle through.
Grape led the way past tall guardian posts to the dark building. The door was latched from the inside. Acorn
first stumbled over a wooden mallet laid to one side, then used it to pound on the door.
“Coming!” a faint voice could be heard over the wind.
Moments later the door slid back to reveal Kosi Fighting Hawk, a breechcloth hastily wrapped around his thick waist. It took him a moment of searching the darkness before he looked down far enough to spot the boys.
“Acorn? Grape? What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know,” Grape muttered, suddenly abashed.
“It’s Father,” Acorn whispered under his breath. “Hickory …”
“He stayed behind,” Grape added. “I’m scared. Our sister is with cousin Blue Shell tonight.”
“Come in. Come in,” Kosi said wearily, reaching down to grasp Acorn by the shoulder. “You are both like ice.” He pushed the heavy door closed behind them and led the way to the fire, now a series of coals that peeked from under layers of ash.
Fighting Hawk bent, used a stick to fish out the largest coals, and added kindling. He blew with the practiced ease of a man who had made many fires in his life. Within moments the flames were casting a strengthening yellow light across the room. From the walls, masks stared down, their empty black eyes surrounded by shell and copper. They were painted, carved with intricate detail to represent Birdman, Long-Nosed God, Horned Serpents, Man-Eating Bird, Tie Snakes, and Water Cougar. Between them—hung from hooks—were gorgeous feather cloaks, colorfully dyed and embroidered fabric capes, shirts, and blankets that winked with a wealth of copper, shell, and mica sequins.
The tishu minko’s stool stood just behind the fire, its form covered with a blanket made of white heron feathers. Behind it, on the wall, hung a giant carving of the human hand, and within its palm, a single wide staring eye: the Seeing Hand. Guardian of the Sky Road to the Land of the Dead. The insignia of their people.

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