Centennial

by James A. Michener

  Despite the fact that Lame Beaver had masterminded the raid, he was given a nervous, unbroken pinto mare, and when he first tried to ride her she tossed him viciously into the middle of a prairie-dog town. The little animals peeked out of their holes in chattering wonder as he limped after the pinto, failing to catch her on his first tries.

  Again and again he sweated with the stubborn pony, not much bigger than he was, and repeatedly she pitched him over her head. Others volunteered to show him how to master her, and they went flying too. Finally an old man said, “I heard once that the Comanche do it by taking their horses into the river.”

  This was such a novel idea that Lame Beaver could not at first grasp its significance, but, after his pinto had resisted all other efforts, he and his friends tied her and dragged her by main strength down to the Platte. She shied away from the water, but they plunged in, keeping hold of the thongs, got a good footing, and pulled and jerked until it looked as if her neck might come off before her stubborn feet touched water. Finally, with a mighty jerk, they got her off the bank and into the stream.

  She was very frightened, but they kept tugging at her until her beautiful white-and-black-and-brown body was mostly submerged. Then Lame Beaver swam close to her, so that his face was almost touching hers. He began to talk with her, slowly and with a reassuring tone: “For years and years you and I will be friends. We will ride after the bison together. You will know the feel of my knees on your flanks and turn as I bid you. We shall be friends for all the years and I will see that you get grass.”

  When he had spoken with her thus, and quieted somewhat the fear in her eyes, he took off the thongs and left her in the middle of the river. Without looking at her further, he swam to the bank and climbed out. She watched him go, made a half-hearted start for the opposite bank, then followed him, but when she was again safe on land she refused to let him approach.

  Daily for two weeks Lame Beaver dragged his pinto into the river, and on the fifteenth day, there in the water, she allowed him to mount her, and when she felt the security of his strong legs about her, she responded and finally ran boldly onto the land and off toward the Rattlesnake Buttes.

  From that moment she was his companion, and she liked nothing more than to chase after bison. Since he required both hands to manipulate his bow, she learned to respond to his knee movements, and they formed a team. She was so sure-footed that he did not try to guide her, satisfied that she would find the best course, whatever the terrain. And sometimes, when he saw her running free with a group of other horses, he would catch sight of her straight back and its white patches and he would experience an emotion that could only be called love.

  He was therefore disturbed when his father came to him and said, “The brother of Blue Leaf is willing that you should marry his sister, but he demands that you fulfill your promise and give him your horse.”

  Lame Beaver snapped, “He has his horse ...”

  “True, but he argues that that horse was given him by the council, not by you. For Blue Leaf, he demands your horse.”

  This outrageous request Lame Beaver refused. He still wanted Blue Leaf; certainly he had seen no other girl so attractive, but not at the price of his horse. Obstinately he declined even to discuss the matter.

  But now the council intervened: “Lame Beaver promised to give a horse for Blue Leaf. Many heard how he made that vow. He cannot now change his mind and refuse to deliver the horse. It belongs to the brother of Blue Leaf.”

  When Lame Beaver heard this decision he was enraged, and might have done something unwise had not Red Nose come to him to speak in low, judicious tones: “There seems no escape, old friend.”

  “I won’t surrender that pinto.”

  “There will be other horses.”

  “None like mine.”

  “She is no longer yours, dear friend. Tonight they will take her away.”

  Such a verdict seemed so unjust that Lame Beaver went before the council and cried, “I will not give up my horse. Her brother doesn’t even care for the one you gave him.”

  “It is proper,” said the elderly chief, “that men should marry in an orderly way, and we have always given presents to the brothers of our brides. A horse is a suitable gift on such an occasion. Yours must be surrendered to the brother of Blue Leaf.”

  On hearing this final judgment, Lame Beaver sped from the council tipi, leaped upon the pinto and dashed from the village, heading southward toward the river. He was followed by Cottonwood Knee, riding a brown pony, and as Lame Beaver was about to spur his pinto into the river, his pursuer caught up with him.

  “Come back!” Cottonwood Knee called in the voice of friendship. “You and I can catch many more horses.”

  “Never like this one,” Lame Beaver said bitterly, but in the end he dismounted and allowed Cottonwood Knee to lead the pinto back to its new owner. As Lame Beaver stood by the river, watching his horse disappear, a feeling of inconsolable grief came over him, and for five days he wandered alone. In the end he returned to camp, and Cottonwood Knee and Red Nose took him before the council, and they said, “We have ordered Blue Leaf’s brother to give her to you. She is now your wife.” There was a hush, then Blue Leaf’s brother appeared, leading his beautiful shy sister. She stood awkwardly before the chiefs, then saw Lame Beaver standing between his friends. Slowly she came to him, extending her hands and offering herself to him. Few young husbands had ever accepted with such turbulent emotions so lovely a wife.

  Lame Beaver now entered a strange world, that of the married man, in which each item of behavior was strictly defined. He could not, for example, ever speak to his wife’s mother; that was totally forbidden until such time as he had presented her with some significant present. In moon periods his wife had to live in a special hut along with other women so afflicted, and while residing there, she might not speak to any man or child, lest she bring curses upon them. The consoling compensation was that with marriage he entered upon the warm and infinitely extended companionship of the Indian village, in which a man had three or four fathers and an equal number of mothers, in which all children belonged to all, and where the raising and education of the young was a common responsibility and punishment and harsh words were unknown.

  It was a community in which each member did pretty much as he chose and where men who were called chiefs held that office not by heredity but by consent of their neighbors. There was no king, neither in this village nor in the tribe as a whole, only the council of older men, to which any well-comported brave might be elected by acclamation. It was one of the freest societies ever devised, hemmed in only by belief in Man-Above, reliance on Flat-Pipe and the inherited customs of Our People. It was communal without the restraints of communism and extremely libertarian without the excesses of libertinism. It was a way of life ideally fitted to the nomads of the plains, where space was endless and the supply of bison inexhaustible.

  It was galling to Lame Beaver to realize that at the next bison hunt he would have to accompany the butcher women on foot, since he had no horse, and he watched with seething anger as lesser huntsmen like his brother-in-law saddled their beasts for the chase. Blue Leaf, observing this, consoled him: “When the hunt is over you’ll get two or three trusted companions and go into the Ute country and capture horses from them. If you did this against the Comanche, you can do it against the Ute.”

  “They keep their horses in mountains,” he snapped, “and I’ve never been in mountains.”

  “I will go to reason with my brother ... offer him a different horse ... later, when you make other coups,” and she moved toward the door of their tipi.

  Lame Beaver was about to reply when all logic was driven from his mind by a brilliant flash of light. Blue Leaf could not see it, for it came from within his heart, an illumination so transcendent that it would guide him for the rest of his life.

  “No!” he cried in exaltation. “No more brothers. No more council.” Rudely he pushed her away from the door, announcing
with fierce dedication, “We shall have other horses ... after the Sun Dance ... many horses.”

  The coup which he performed that year was never counted officially, because it had no witnesses, and since he would tell no one what had happened, not even his wife, the tribe had to take it on faith that some extraordinary event had occurred, perhaps even the intercession of Man-Above. They referred to it in tribal annals as “Lame Beaver’s visit to the sun,” and accepted it as a mystery.

  Let us look at Lame Beaver on the eve of his journey. He was slightly under six feet tall and weighed one hundred and seventy-three pounds, which gave him a lean, rangy look. He had black hair that he wore in two braids which came to the tip of his shoulders and were bound by bison thong decorated with elk’s teeth. He had very dark eyes, deep-set, but because of his diffident nature, not piercing. His skin was a light bronze, not nearly so dark as a Ute’s nor so red as a Pawnee’s. At this stage he had all his teeth, but some of the corners were beginning to show signs of wear from his habit of eating only jerky during the winter; he did not like the easier-chewed pemmican, considering it women’s food.

  Since he had walked long distances most of his life, he liked moccasins made of the heaviest bison leather rather than the softer deer or elk even though they were easier on his feet. Most of the time he wore a breech-clout, and otherwise went naked except for his moccasins, but in winter he liked rather heavy full-length leggings whose outer seams were well fringed or even decorated with small feathers. He wore a vest, too, elaborately painted, and a light robe about his shoulders, made from the skin of a young bison.

  Once as a child watching the great chiefs convene, he had been awed by their headbands of beads and eagle feathers, and had even gone so far as to fashion a childish one with little feathers picked up on the prairie. Later he recognized that he had no appetite for power and he relinquished its pretensions to others.

  When he first experienced the horse and had one of his own, he blended with it harmoniously, adapting his body to the animal’s, and he might in time have become as good a rider as the Comanche, but being deprived of the pinto by tribal law, he ceased all identification with the horse and would henceforth consider it only as a means of transport and would allow no deep attachment to develop.

  He seemed a cold, self-disciplined man, but he was not. Injustice had graved deep marks on both his heart and his face, and he was capable of furious action. He was careful, however, not to indulge in fits of rage before others or in conditions which might endanger him or any enterprise with which he was connected. He was able to bear much pain, either deprivation of water on long summer marches or the intense cold of winter, and he was about to exhibit this capacity to a degree that would have been totally impossible to most white men living at that period.

  As to his intelligence, he was equipped to handle the world he knew. He had an excellent memory, fortified by acute powers of observation. Since his life was lived on a simple level, he addressed himself to simple problems. Since he was not required to bother with a lot of extraneous data from outside sources, he had not developed his reasoning powers to any high degree. He was largely unacquainted with abstract thought and was content to have his small world closely confined by tradition and custom.

  He prized the companionship of all people, and was as much at home with children as he was with older warriors. He loved the intimacy of married life and retained close contacts with his three fathers, three mothers and various other relatives. Like most of Our People he was essentially gentle, avoided warfare when he could, but acknowledged that a man’s final worth depended on his capacity to count coup. He had not yet killed a man and intuitively drew back from considering in what circumstances he might one day have to do so; he preferred not to think of this. He would face the necessity when it arrived but would not hasten the day. He suffered an inner fear that he might prove cowardly at the moment of trial.

  He had a deep sense of identity with living things. Having once seen a fish jump in the river, arching its back in a lovely curve, he often watched the water, hoping to see this phenomenon again. He enjoyed excursions to find lodge poles for tipis and knew well the kinds of trees that yielded such poles. He understood the bison, and he could track elk and deer. He knew where the beaver hid and how eagles could be trapped for their feathers. When his course required him to pass close to Rattlesnake Buttes he knew how to guard against the poison snakes and yet find a place to watch the prairie dogs at play. He liked the wolves and felt that they added definition to the other wild things of the prairie; sometimes he felt a deep identification with the wolf and had often speculated on the desirability of changing his name to Sun Wolf, after a great beast he had seen one day snapping at the sun.

  It was this man, still seething with anger at having been deprived of his pinto, who sought spiritual cleansing for the task to which he was about to commit himself. To do what he intended, and alone, would require the control of every faculty he had, and this could be ensured only by offering himself to the sun. After pondering for some days what he must do, he appeared before his wife and announced, “When the Sun Dance is held, I shall offer myself.”

  Blue Leaf shuddered. Lame Beaver saw this and frowned. “We must both make the sacrifice,” he insisted, without deigning to explain what his ultimate purpose was in committing himself to the sun. He did try to console her, but she withdrew. She appreciated the fact that when a man dedicated himself to the sun, events happened and no one could foresee their consequences.

  The Sun Dance, as observed by Our People at that time, was a celebration covering eight days, and it was of such spiritual significance that other villages, oftentimes from far away, were invited to participate. Flat-Pipe was paraded to lend authority, and numerous intricate rituals were observed. On the fourth day stakes were driven into the ground, delimiting a ceremonial area, and on the fifth a sacred place was identified within this area.

  It was marked by fourteen willow sticks painted red and protected by a low palisade of cottonwood branches. At the center Flat-Pipe was installed, flanked by two massive bison skulls, on each of which rested a very sharp wooden skewer plus a length of thong. Small boys, imagining the day when they would claim manhood, studied these skulls and shivered. Two young braves, noted for courage, moved forward, consecrated themselves to the sun, and stepped within the palisade, lifting the heavy skulls, the skewers and the thongs. Presenting these to a group of old men skilled in conducting this part of the ceremony, they waited impassively as the elders tested the sharp points of the skewers.

  Now the older men went to the first brave, felt for his back muscle and jabbed a skewer under it. Pushing hard, they forced the wood beneath the taut muscle and out the other side, bringing with it a gush of blood. Testing the skewer for firmness, they secured one end of the thong to it, lashing the other end to the skull, which they placed in the young man’s hands. Betraying no evidence of pain, he lifted the skull toward the sun, then threw it to the ground, waiting at attention while the old men repeated the ritual on his companion.

  The young warriors now leaped forward. The thongs tightened against the skewers. The bison heads dragged heavily in the sand, almost tearing the skewers through the back muscles, and the braves danced and danced and danced.

  Lame Beaver, who had not volunteered for this lesser offering, watched. Women chanted and old men urged the younger on, and for some hours the latter dragged the skulls in a kind of trance, the pain long since numbed by the self-hypnosis. Finally the horn of one skull caught in sagebrush; the thongs tightened and the skewer ripped through the back muscle of that dancer. He collapsed.

  On the sixth day it was time for Lame Beaver to offer himself, and he sought out Cottonwood Knee, leading him to the spot where Blue Leaf stood awaiting this terrible moment. Taking his young friend’s hand, Lame Beaver placed it in the hand of his wife and said in a loud voice, “Take her. Get her with child. This is my first sacrifice.” Then he stepped back and watched as Cottonwo
od Knee led Blue Leaf to a tipi set aside for this highest of ritual purposes. Lame Beaver had sacrificed even his wife, and this proved his eligibility for the ordeal which awaited.

  He now confronted his three fathers, holding out to them a pair of sharp skewers and two very long thongs. His oldest father stepped forward, grasped Lame Beaver by the soft flesh of his chest and probed with his fingers until he located his son’s left pectoral muscle. Drawing it taut, he reached for a skewer, and after offering it ceremoniously to the sun, jabbed it under the muscle until both ends protruded. The second father did the same with the right pectoral muscle, staring into his son’s eyes as the young man accepted the great pain without flinching.

  The fathers then lashed the thongs to the skewers and signaled to the watching crowd. A lithe young man leaped forward, grasped the free ends of the thongs and climbed to the top of a pole standing in the middle of the ceremonial area. There he passed the throngs over a deep notch cut into the top of the pole, allowing the ends to fall free. Before he reached the ground, eight strong men had grasped each thong and had started hauling Lame Beaver into the air until he dangled seven feet above the ground, his whole weight suspended from the skewers passing through his breast.