Plenty Proud

by Jeanie P Johnson

  “Go and be happy with your own life,” Eagle Eye told Plenty Proud. “You refuse to remain our friend, and yet you come to accuse us on the happy day of our child’s naming. Do not dishonor yourself any more than you already have!”

  Plenty Proud turned and left, wishing things could be different and the child Firelight held in her arms truly did belong to him. He was certain it must because he had taken Firelight first, before she left down the river, he reasoned stubbornly.

  A few minutes later, Little Bird appeared. She looked down at Mackenzie’s child and smiled sadly. “You have a beautiful son,” she sighed. “Plenty Proud claims the babe belongs to him. Is this so?”

  “There is no way to know. As far as anyone can tell, Eagle Eye could be the father, and therefore I wish to believe that he is. Do not let your heart be troubled over this, Little Bird. Once you have your child, Plenty Proud will be happy because he will know for certain the child belongs to him. I know you will both be good parents to your little son or daughter. Then when our children grow older, they can play together as friends and end all of this turmoil. I hope we can become closer friends in the future too.”

  Little Bird nodded. “I wish the same. You have been kind and have wished both me and Plenty Proud happiness. I wish you happiness too.”

  “Thank you, Little Bird,” Mackenzie mumbled, wishing the past away and the weight of loving Plenty Proud could be lifted from her shoulders, only she knew it never could.

  Every time she saw him, her heart leaped into her throat. His face brought back forbidden memories she wanted to erase from her head, and yet keep close to her heart at the same time. She thought the love she felt for Eagle Eye would erase all the feelings she had experienced with Plenty Proud, but she was discovering that to be impossible. She just didn’t know how to go about stopping the love she had for Plenty Proud any more than he could forget about love he had her. It was a no win situation.

  What if her son did belong to Plenty Proud, she wondered? She looked closely into the infant’s face to see if she could detect any resemblance, only Eagle Eye and Plenty Proud had similar features which seemed to meld into one, when she looked at them. She believed she would never know who Brave Eyes actually belonged to.

  CHAPTER FORTEEN

  Plenty Proud woke in a sweat. He realized he was having the same vision dream of standing in a tepee with Firelight, and each of them holding a baby. She had already given birth several months ago, and Little Bird was about to deliver his first child. It made him wonder if Wakan-Tanka was telling him that Firelight’s son was actually his as much as the baby his wife was about to deliver was. Only the feeling that was washing over him was not one of joy, had he been dreaming about his future child. It was one of foreboding, and it confused him as much as the vision had the first time he had it.

  He glanced over at Little Bird beside him under the buffalo robe. She had been sleeping fitfully all night, but now she seemed more restful, the expression on her face was one of peace. Her eyes flew open as he looked down on her, and she gasped.

  “I think it is time,” she cried. “I am all wet! The baby must be coming. Quick, take me to the birthing lodge,” she begged.

  She was having a hard time standing, so Plenty Proud threw a blanket over her and swooped her up in his arms and carried her there. His mother looked worried, but she did not follow, knowing Little Bird must suffer this alone, and Plenty Proud was capable of calling a medicine man if one was needed.

  Plenty Proud deposited Little Bird inside the birthing lodge and stood outside. He knew it could be a long time before the child was born, as other fathers had informed him, so he tried not to be impatient. He could hear Little Bird whimpering, but she never cried out as other mothers had done during their ordeal of bringing a child into the world.

  “How are you feeling?” Plenty Proud called to her.

  “I am so tired, I cannot walk or dance, the way your mother instructed me. I am going to rest for a while. It may not be time for the baby to come yet. The pains aren’t that strong.”

  “Let me know if I should bring a priest,” he offered, only she didn’t answer.

  Plenty Proud stood anxiously listing for signs that Little Bird was about to deliver, only she made few indications that she was even in any pain, so he figured she must be right, and it was too early for her to get excited about anything. He was also tired and wished he could rest, but his place was there to assist his wife if she needed him, and to be there to dispose of the after-birth when the time came.

  After several hours, while Plenty Proud was almost asleep on his feet, he heard a blood-curdling scream that jolted him fully awake, and assumed the time had come. Then all was quiet again. He waited for the next scream, but instead heard the crying of a baby. His heart lifted. It must have been quick an easy birth, he decided, since Little Bird seemed to be quiet now. He pushed the tepee flap aside to enter, not wishing to wait to be summoned to dispose of the after-birth because he was eager to see his firstborn child.

  Little Bird held the infant at her breast. He noticed she had tied and cut the belly cord already. Her face looked pale, though, and she appeared tired, as she gave him a weak smile.

  “It is a girl,” she murmured.

  “Eagle Eye smiled back. He had wished for a brave, yet a daughter would give him as much joy, he told himself, as he looked down upon the infant’s face.

  “It does not seem to want to eat,” he murmured, as he saw the baby was not struggling to find food.

  “It must be as tired as I am,” Little Bird mumbled.

  “When will the after-birth come?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It is my first child and your mother never said how much time it would take.”

  “I will wait beside you then since I am already here,” he said, pushing the damp hair back from Little Bird’s forehead.

  “I feel so weak,” Little Bird whispered.

  To Plenty Proud she looked pale, and it alarmed him. He had seen braves die in battle, looking pale like she did. He pulled the blanket she was covered with aside, hoping to find the after-birth, but all he saw was blood. This did not seem right.

  “Did my mother say how much blood there would be?” he asked, swallowing hard.

  Little Bird shook her head. She could see the fear in Plenty Proud’s eyes. “If anything happens to me, let Firelight take the baby and nurse it. I have seen how strong her son is. I think she has good milk,” she whispered, her voice straining and trailing off.

  “Nothing is going to happen to you,” Plenty Proud insisted. “I am going to get my mother and the medicine man. I will return as soon as possible,” he promised, kissing her forehead.

  Plenty Proud started to sprint through the early spring slush caused by the ground beginning to thaw. He called to his mother, and told her to bring the priest, while he returned to his wife’s side. Then he sprinted back and ducked under the flap, only when he knelt beside Little Bird, he realized she was not breathing any longer. Frantically, he shook her and cried out her name, but it only made his daughter whimper instead. The child looked weak and it had not tried to nurse. He wrapped it in a soft infant blanket Little Bird had told him to bring with them when he brought her there, and huddled it to his breast, as his tears fell upon Little Bird’s lifeless face.

  “No!” he moaned, while he sat rocking back and forth with the babe in his arms, trying to warm it, until his mother and the priest appeared. “She is gone,” he sobbed. “Before she died, she asked me to let Firelight feed our daughter. The Great Spirit must have warned her of her death. I must take the babe to Firelight now. She is so cold and weak and wouldn’t nurse when she was born. Then I will return to paint Little Bird’s face and prepare her for her death ritual, which will take place after the allotted waiting period.”

  Plenty Proud sloshed through the village in the direction of Eagle Eye’s tepee. He could barely breathe as he tried to stifle his tears. His chest ached in a way it never had before, and h
e realized how much he had actually loved Little Bird, yet his love for Firelight always seemed to stand between them.

  When he arrived, he lifted the flap of Eagle Eye’s tepee without ceremony and stepped in. He could only see Mackenzie there in the tepee, holding her son in her arms. Plenty Proud froze and shivered, reliving the scene of the dream with both him and Firelight holding a baby inside a tepee. This was what his dream had meant, he thought, with sudden awareness. Firelight would end up caring for his daughter along with her son, whom he believed was his own son. The Great Spirit had known this was going to happen and had given him the future vision of it. It made him believe even more that Firelight’s son must also his son or why would Wakan-Tanka even show him the vision when he was asking if he should take Firelight for his wife?

  Mackenzie looked up in shock. “What are you doing here…?” she gasped, and then paused when she saw he held an infant in his arms.

  “Little Bird has died in childbirth,” he whispered, trying to keep the tears from spilling over again. “Before she died, she made me promise to bring our daughter to you to feed and care for. She said she thought your milk was good and would make our child as strong and healthy as your son.”

  Mackenzie struggle for breath, when the words took hold. “No…it can’t be,” she cried. Then she swallowed to try and calm her shivers. “Bring the child here,” she murmured, placing her son on the buffalo robe beside her, since he was asleep, and holding out her arms for Plenty Proud’s daughter.

  Plenty Proud gently lowered the baby into Mackenzie’s arms, almost reluctantly.

  “I will feed and care for your daughter along with my own son, and you are welcome to come any time to be with her, if you promise to forgive me and Eagle Eye and become our friend again.”

  “I have no choice. It was Little Bird’s wish. She asked me several times to forgive you, only because of my pride, I refused. I should have forgiven you a long time ago. I wish for your friendship again and hope you will forgive me for my anger.”

  “Good,” Mackenzie stated. “You are forgiven. Go back to your wife and take care of what needs to be done.”

  “I had a vision I would be standing here like this. I didn’t know what it meant. It was before you left down the river, and I thought it meant you were to give me two children. Now I see I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong about other things too, only I will never be wrong about my love for you,” he said, and then he left the tepee.

  Mackenzie pressed the small infant to her breast. After a little coaxing, she latched on and discovered she was actually hungry as milk started to gurgled in her throat and she sucked all the harder. Mackenzie gazed down upon the little girl’s face, seeing more of Little Bird than she had expected. She felt sad for the young maiden who had hoped to win Plenty Proud’s heart from the beginning and Mackenzie had created turmoil in the young Sioux’s life just by being there. She thought about how they had talked about their children playing together, only now, Little Bird would never witness that future joy. Mackenzie quivered inside, wondering how Plenty Proud would ever get over it. First he had lost her to Eagle Eye, and now he lost Little Bird. If the Great Spirit knew this was going to happen, why did he allow Plenty Proud to suffer through this? Nothing made sense anymore. Her own life had been in shambles, and she was just now trying to make it work out right.

  Now she would see Plenty Proud almost constantly when he checked on his daughter, and she wondered if either of them would be able to resist the strong draw that sparked between them. Only she knew the punishment for adultery, therefore, she must count on the love she had for Eagle Eye to keep her safe from acting on any love she felt for Plenty Proud.

  Eagle Eye came into the tepee and rushed to Mackenzie’s side. “I heard about Little Bird,” he exclaimed, as he looked down at the infant in her arms. I hear Plenty Proud is preparing her to go to the ‘Other Side Camp’. Now you will have two children to care for.” He looked a little worried, knowing it would bring Plenty Proud back into her life again, but he didn’t say what he was thinking.

  “I can manage. It is the least I can do for Little Bird. We were friends in spite of Plenty Proud. He has forgiven us, so life can go back to normal again.”

  “Life will never be normal again,” Eagle eye mumbled, and Mackenzie knew he was right.

  He picked up Brave Eyes, and placed him in the cradleboard. “You will need a cradle board for Plenty Proud’s daughter,” he told her absentmindedly.

  “I am sure Little Bird had one ready that Plenty Proud’s aunt made her. We will ask White Wing for it when we see her.”

  “The village is getting ready to mourn for Little Bird, only after Plenty Proud has painted his wife’s face, we will wait until the morning sun while Plenty Proud mourns and to make sure she has really passed on to the other side. Then the family will help prepare her, wrapping her in a damp buffalo hide and tying it snuggly around her. Next, several water-soaked hides, taken from the lodge where she died, assuring her ghost does not remain there, will be wrapped and tied around her to make sure no air can reach the body. They will stiffen, once they dry, to keep her safely warped. Then we will take her to a sacred area and place her in a burial tree where the wild animals cannot reach her. All of the village will come to wish her a safe journey to the other side.”

  Eagle Eye shook his head sadly, feeling Plenty Proud’s loss. If anything ever happened to Firelight, he wouldn’t want to live any longer, he thought as he watched his wife nursing Plenty Proud’s daughter. Seeing it, caused a twinge of jealousy to shoot through him, but he worked at keeping it in check. She would now become like a mother to Plenty Proud’s daughter, just as he was a father to Brave Eyes, who could possibly be Plenty Proud’s son.

  Plenty Proud knelt in the birthing tent beside Little Bird’s still body. He had washed her, while she lay on the buffalo robe, and then dressed her in the white fringed dress she had worn when they became tied. Now, he painstakingly began to paint her face in his own war paint colors. Even in life, it was the husband’s duty to paint his wife’s face for special ceremonies and celebrations. The only exception was if the brave had not counted coup. Then he was not worthy to paint a wife’s face, and usually could not even ask a woman to be his wife, unless he was beyond the regular age of marriage and a woman agreed to become his wife in spite of his lack of status in the tribe. Plenty Proud noticed how cold Little Bird’s skin felt against his fingers, and the way all the muscles in her face were relaxed, causing her features to look strangely different than she had looked in life.

  He lovingly braided her hair for the last time. It was customary for the husband to tend to the wife’s hair and the wife to tend to the husband’s hair. When he was finished, he took his knife, and cut his own braids off, placing them entwined in Little Bird’s fingers, as his tears fell, dotting her dress with dark splotches. The hair was the soul, and he was sending some of his soul with Little Bird to take with her to the Other Side Camp. Because they believed the hair was an extension of the soul, it was the only time a Sioux, either male or female, would cut their hair.

  One of the reasons his people scalped the enemy was to punish them and stop their soul from going to the Other Side Camp, until they decided the enemy had suffered long enough, and then released their soul during the Hair Kill Dance ceremony.

  Little Bird would be given enough food to last her on her short journey to the Other Side Camp, when she was placed in the fork of a tree. It was believed that the life on the other side was much like their life there on earth, and whatever was placed with the dead when they were sent to the other side, would transform itself into the spirit and assist them in the other life. Therefore, braves were given their weapons, to use in the ‘happy hunting ground’, and their war pony would, either be tied to where they were placed for the short journey there, or sometimes killed, so it, too, could go with its owner to the other side. Any food or belongings placed with a dead member of any tribe, was never disturbed or taken by any other member
of any tribe whether they be an enemy or not. Even if the person coming upon a gravesite was starving and had no way to kill game, they would never degrade themselves by stealing from the dead. Each tribe’s sacred beliefs intertwined with all other tribes, regardless of their origin, and what was sacred to one was also sacred to the other.

  When Plenty Proud was finished, he lay down beside Little Bird and sobbed into the buffalo robe. It felt peculiar to him to have short hair and its absences reminded him all the more of Little Bird’s absences. He had lost Firelight to Eagle Eye and now he had lost Little Bird too. He wondered if he was being punished because he had broken his vow and took Little Bird for his wife before Firelight had a chance to return. That must have been what the vision was telling him…that because of his own choice, he would not only lose Firelight to Eagle Eye, but he would lose his own wife, and then hand his daughter over to Firelight to care for, in a way to gain her forgiveness for not keeping his vow of love. After all, he had gone to Little Bird, causing Firelight to take Eagle Eye as her husband instead. The blame was entirely upon his own head. The Great Spirit must have known he would never keep his vow to remain as a widower if Firelight left him. He had not been worthy of Firelight’s love, or even that of Little Bird, he berated himself.

  Eventually, he fell asleep and was caught up in dreams of making love to Firelight and then seeing her turn into Little Bird and fly away. He saw himself running through tall grass, playing with his young daughter and Firelight’s son, while she watched on. It made him feel that there was still a small sliver of happiness remaining for him in his future, and he would have to cling to it, if nothing else.

  Plenty Proud slept the entire day and night, and when he woke the next morning, Little Bird still lay, stiff and cold, and he knew it was time to warp her. He dampened the buffalo robe she lay upon and wrapped it lovingly around her, tying it snug with rawhide strips. Then he began his lamenting in a chanting, mournful cry. When his family heard him, they began dismantling the hides from the birthing lodge tepee, and took them to the river to soak, bringing them back to finish wrapping Little Bird for her journey to the Other Side Camp.