Long Knife

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “Men and warriors, pay attention. You informed me yesterday that the Great Spirit had brought us together, which you hoped was good, as he is good …” A smile actually broke the face of the old chief, upon hearing his own words thus cited.

  “I also have the same hope,” George went on, “and whatever may be agreed upon by us at the present time, whether for peace or war, I expect each party will strictly adhere to, and henceforward prove ourselves worthy of the attention of the Great Spirit.”

  They liked that. They sat straighter and their faces softened for a moment. He continued:

  “I am a man and a warrior, not a councilor. I carry War in my right hand …” he raised the red belt over-head, then the white belt, “… and in my left hand, Peace. I was sent by the Council Fire of the Big Knives and their friends to take control of all the towns the British possess in this country, and to remain here watching the conduct of the red men. I was sent to bloody the paths of those who continue the effort to stop the course of the rivers, but to clear the roads that lead from us to those who wish to be in friendship with us, in order that the women and children may walk in them without anything being in the way to strike their feet against; and to continue to call on the Great Fire for warriors enough to darken the land of those who are hostile to us, so that the inhabitants shall hear no sound in it but that of birds that live on blood.” He paused here again for the interpreters, wishing meanwhile with all his might that it could be that easy to call more soldiers from the East.

  “I know that a mist is yet before your eyes,” he said, and again the old chief nodded approvingly at the echo of his own words. “I will dispel the clouds in order that you may see clearly the cause of the war between the Big Knives and the English, that you may judge for yourselves which is in the right. Then if you’re men and warriors, as you profess to be, prove it by adhering strictly to what you may now declare, without deceiving either party and thus proving yourselves to be only old women.” Here he let his eyes wander over the entire congregation, making a point of resting his eyes, for a change, on the face of Big Gate, whose lips grew tighter.

  Then he leaned just slightly toward the Indians, and warmed the tone of his voice. “The Big Knives are very much like the red men. They do not know well how to make blankets, powder, and cloth; they buy these things from the English, from whom they formerly descended, and live chiefly by raising corn, hunting, and trading, as you and the French your neighbors do.

  “But the Big Knives were daily becoming more numerous, like the trees in the woods, so that the land became poor and the hunting scarce, and having but little to trade with, the women began to cry to see their children naked, and tried to make clothes for themselves, and soon gave their husbands blankets of their own making. And the men learned to make guns and powder, so that they did not want so much from the English.” The chiefs seemed to be hearing this quite sympathetically, as he had hoped. He knew how the Indians struggled for survival year after year, and he knew how they loved their women and children. Logan the Mingo had taught him that.

  “Then,” he said, “the English became very angry and stationed strong garrisons through all our country—as you see they have done among you on the Lakes and among the French—and would not let our women spin nor the men make powder, nor let us trade with anybody else. They said we must buy everything from them; and since we had become saucy, they would make us give them two bucks for a blanket that we used to get for one. They said we must do as they pleased, and they killed some of us to make the rest afraid.

  “This is the truth and the cause of the war between us, which did not begin until they had treated us some time in this fashion. Our women and children were cold and hungry and continued to cry. Our young men were lost, and there were no counselors …” He stopped and gave the old chief a respectful look, “to set them in the right path. The whole land was dark, and the old men hung down their heads in shame, for they could not see the sun.” The Indians, the whole great semicircle of them, sat in perfect stillness, listening to the words of the interpreters.

  “Thus there was mourning for many years,” he resumed. “At last the Great Spirit took pity upon us and kindled a great council fire that never goes out, at a place called Philadelphia. He struck down a post there and left a war tomahawk by it and went away. The sun at once broke out and the sky became blue. The old men held up their heads and assembled at the fire. They sharpened the hatchet and put it into the hands of the young men and told them to strike the English as long as they could find one on this side of the Great Water. The young men immediately struck the war post and blood ensued.” He had been gradually raising his voice while describing this, and saw that the Indians were being stirred by the excitement in his tone. He dropped his voice now and went on, the Indians leaning forward to hear the rest:

  “Thus the war began, and the English were driven from one place to another, until they became weak, and hired you red men to fight for them and help them.

  “The Great Spirit became angry at this, and caused your old Father, the French King, and other great nations to join the Big Knives and fight with them against all their enemies, so that the English have become like a deer in the woods. From this you may see that it is the Great Spirit that caused your waters to be troubled, because you fought for the people he was angry with; and if your women and children should cry, you must blame yourselves for it, and not the Big Knives.” He let that sink in, then he said:

  “You can now judge who is in the right. I have already told you who I am. Here is a bloody belt and a white one. Take whichever you please. Behave like men and don’t let your present situation, being surrounded by the Big Knives …” From the corner of his eye he saw Bowman suddenly uncross his legs and recross them, placing his hand over his mouth as if to keep from laughing. “Do not let that cause you to take up the one belt with your hands when your hearts drink up the other …” For a terrible moment, George was swept with mirth at the thought of Bowman’s suppressed laughter, and at his own audacity, but he kept his face straight and silently thanked God for helping him do so.

  “If you take the bloody path,” he went on, “you shall go from this town in safety and join your friends the English; and we will try, like warriors, to see who can put the most stumbling blocks in the road and keep our clothes perfumed with blood the longest.

  “If you should take the path of peace and now be received as brothers to the Big Knives and the French, but should hereafter listen to bad birds that will be flying through your land, you will no longer be counted as men but as persons with two tongues, who ought to be destroyed without listening to what you say, as nobody could understand you.” He watched their faces as that was translated to them. It will put them on their honor, he thought with satisfaction, because they see each other here listening to it. And sometime soon, perhaps now, he knew, Tobacco’s Son and other great chiefs of the Wabash tribes would be hearing essentially this same speech, getting this same challenge of their honor, from the lips of old Leonard Helm. He had rehearsed it over and over back in Kaskaskia with old Len, and could almost hear his own words now ringing over the Wabash in Len’s ear-stabbing twang.

  Now the interpreters were waiting and it was time to conclude. “Since I am convinced that you’ve never heard the truth before, I do not wish you to give me an answer before you’ve had time to council. We will part this evening, and when you’re ready, if the Great Spirit will bring us together again, let us prove ourselves worthy by speaking and thinking with but one heart and one tongue.”

  With that, he turned on his heel, went around behind the table, and sat down, his sword and the belts before him. A cool breeze in the elm shade soothed his damp face. Birds twittered in the high foliage. A fly buzzed past his ear. Bowman shifted on his bench and rested his elbows on the end of the table and, his left profile to the Indians, winked his pale right eye at George. Beyond, Father Gibault sat beaming, his fingers laced across his midsection. And then the chiefs,
following the example of their white-braided spokesman, stood up one by one and filed out of the shade into the sunlight, silent, straight, and dignified, their warriors falling in behind them. In two minutes they were all in their camps and the great pool of shade was deserted, ringing with the endless call of the summer locusts.

  HE AWOKE IN THE DARKNESS, MOANING LOW IN HIS THROAT AND taking deep breaths. Voluptuous thoughts, of arms and hips and long hair and bedding, roiled and grew vague as he became aware of the crickets outside and the dim gray square of the window, the stars glinting through the closed panes, the slick place under his hip in the sweat-soaked bedding. It had happened again, that curse of the lonely man, the seductive dream. It had been of a young woman he had bundled with one night in Caroline County. The constraint of the bundling-board had been ineffective, as it sometimes proved to be, and the occurrence of that night had repeated itself periodically in his dreams, as just now. Sleeping naked because of the summer heat in the closed room—security among the congregated tribes here at Cahokia forbade open windows—he lay now feeling the sensations ebb from his loins. He did not like it to happen. There was always the clammy discomfort afterward, and the sense of wasted energy. And what if the guard outside the door had heard him moaning, as he was sure he had been? And, too, it reminded him of his perennial loneliness.

  He moved aside a bit in the narrow cot and considered that loneliness, which had become worse since his successes here in the Illinois. A private soldier could either bear his loneliness, which was part of being a soldier, or he could court or buy some temporary companionship when his energies ran too high in the night. The commander, though, especially one who had become such an object of public attention as he had, was forced to be totally discreet. Even though his successes in leadership seemed somehow to have made his yearnings even stronger, made every woman he saw seem more desirable, they had isolated him more than any private soldier ever could be. He could not take up with some common woman of the villages, or a squaw, or go to a brothel. Some commanders, less jealous of their example, might, but he could not. And gossip, which seemed to be the main preoccupation of the French villagers, made it almost impossible to imagine how he could have an affair of the heart—or even one of the loins—with any one of those respectable misses such as he had steered about the ballroom floor at Cerré’s.

  I am chaperoned by my role, he thought. I am as tightly chaperoned by my reputation as a Spanish noblewoman is by her duenna.

  And now he had brought himself thus to thinking of that young woman again. Teresa, that was her name. Teresa. He had learned it from that trader yesterday, that Vigo. A fine fellow. Simply by mentioning de Leyba, George had brought down upon himself a torrent of praise and information about that lovely family. Vigo was enchanted by them all, by Teresa, especially, but apparently in an avuncular way. And she was de Leyba’s sister; his guess about that had been right.

  But how that Vigo had prattled on about her charms! As if advertising her. Could it be, George thought now, amused, that the little fellow is one of those congenital matchmakers who seem to exist everywhere, in every village? He smiled in the darkness and listened to the night sounds. Be that as it may, he thought, that fellow is a splendid character and promises to be an incomparable ally. One who ranges this whole territory, is trusted by everyone, knows the commercial ways, has goods and credit. And Gibault says you can trust him with your life if he’s taken a liking to you.

  George did not like to mix his thoughts of one’s usefulness with his thoughts of one’s friendship, but all American responsibilities out here being his own, he had to think in terms of everybody’s usefulness. Someday, he thought, I’ll have the luxury again of enjoying friends who are of no use to me. As for now, they have to be considered part and parcel of the plan to survive.

  In his mind now he saw a connection, a sort of vein work, consisting of Gabriel Cerré in Kaskaskia, de Leyba in St. Louis, Vigo everywhere in the territory, and Oliver Pollock and Governor Galvez in New Orleans far down the river. Through them flowed the lifeblood of his triumphant but desperate little army. Lead and powder. Grain. Meat. Clothing. Tools and canvas and weapons and paper and rope, wax, cotton, quinine, tallow and salt and rum. And all of this flowed according to the power of an ephemeral something called credit. His signature and the name of the Virginia Assembly, written on hundreds of ledger sheets and vouchers of paper. Paper. Scarcer even than gold. He had made lists and vouchers on flysheets cut from books, on the backs of letters, on anything made of that precious stuff. One of his most worrisome burdens now, one that he felt must be guarded at the cost of life almost, was his packet of records. He had signed his name too many times, and in that network of goods and credit imprinted on his brain there was not even a shadow of a line leading directly to or from Virginia. Nothing from there but silence. Someday there’s going to be an accounting, he thought. He had faith in the word of Henry and Jefferson and their peers and in the state itself. But it was exceedingly tenuous, that connection. He longed for messengers from Virginia as he longed for food. I’ve built a mountain of promises out here in this valley, he thought, promises to the French, and promises to my boys, and now promises even to the Indians, all of which I have to trust Virginia will honor. Yet I can’t seem to get from that place even an inflated pound note or an able-bodied rifleman. Nay, not even a word.

  Five hundred men from that place—even four hundred, perhaps—maybe even three hundred and fifty would be enough, if they were like these—and I could go and reduce Detroit, and the Northwest would be secure. Detroit. The image of the gate of the great fort at Detroit burned in his mind now, as real and detailed as if he had actually seen it.

  Big Gate, he thought. That bloody English Indian there among the chiefs: He has seen the gate at Detroit, and fought there. His time will come. He’ll need special handling. He seems to have a sense of himself in the context of destiny.

  Maybe that’s my problem, too, George thought, with a sudden rush of clear understanding.

  That, he thought, could be the worst kind of disease.

  He thought then of another Indian who seemed to have a sense of destiny: Saguina of the Chippewas, known as Mister Black Bird. Mister Black Bird had not come to the councils, but had, like Big Gate, sent a letter. And traders had brought word that he was waiting to be invited. And so George had sent the invitation back with them. Mister Black Bird was the chief of a great band of warriors in the northern region of St. Joseph. He had personally been among those treating with Hamilton in 1777, when Hamilton had danced at the fire with the savages. Now he wanted to come and treat with the Big Knives. George wanted very much to talk with Mister Black Bird, who was known as a wise man and probably could be brought to see the light. With him neutralized, the march against Detroit would be that much less perilous. Probably he is on his way here now, George thought. It would take him several days. But I would like to have him here while the others are still in council.

  George reached for a corner of the sheet and wiped sweat from his face and chest and thought of the hundreds of Indians encamped at this moment not a half mile from where he slept. Or tried to sleep, he corrected himself.

  These hundreds of savages I have surrounded, he thought, and puffed out voiceless laughter in the dark.

  What a people, he thought, with his usual wonderment. How they yearn to trust! How they love ceremony, and the poesy in words and deeds! And, yet, damn! There’s nothing like them for cruelty.

  A ghastly memory arose in his mind, something from Dunmore’s War: A white man, captive of the Mingoes or perhaps some allied tribe, had been stripped, his groin had been opened by a sharp knife, his small bowel severed at its lower end and tied to a sapling tree, and he had been forced to walk around and around the tree until the full length of his guts was wound around it. After he had fallen, or perhaps before, they had also lifted his scalp. The frontiersmen had found him kneeling there dead, still warm, bathed in the bloody slime of his own innards. What a people
, he thought, remembering that, shuddering.

  But our own people have done no less, he thought. A sergeant in Harrod’s company, for instance, had as his most prized possession a bracelet made of a squaw’s genitals.

  Thank God my boys aren’t all like that one, he thought, though many of ’em are: Insane when it comes to Indians. But give me men like Simon Butler. He’s killed more Indians than any of ‘em, but he’s never killed one he didn’t have to, and he won’t take a scalp. George mused fondly on Butler, who was at this moment on his way to Kentucky to persuade them down there, if possible, to send men here for an assault on Detroit.

  Outside the door the sentry moved. George heard the pop of his knee joints and a weary sigh. To have people lose sleep a-guarding you, he thought; what a sorry necessity that is. But it is a necessity. Sentinels awake, and guard squads sleeping clothed and ready, were stationed throughout the town. George knew he would be considered quite a prize, his new reputation being what it was, for any band of braves who might have the boldness to try to surprise him in the night and carry him off, either dead or alive. Any warrior who could do that right now would become a legend among the tribes and a prince among the British. Another dubious benefit of my new-made fame, he thought. Not only have I no privacy, but must be guarded like a chest of gold.

  He tried to give the Indians an impression that he was careless about his personal safety, that he had no anxiety whatsoever, and thus he kept his guard as unobtrusive as possible, and lodged in a seemingly unguarded house outside the fort. But beyond that door sat the hidden sentry, and in an adjoining room dozed a dozen more armed men. And directly across the street in another house was a guard squad of French militia, volunteers from Kaskaskia.