Scarlet Feather

by Joan Grant

  The Half-brothers each had a small tepee of their own in a clearing up-river from the main encampment. Tannek’s tepee smelt of new wood and deer-sinews, except when he was boiling fish-glue and then there was no room for any other smell.

  Minshi, who was much older than Tannek and rather surly, was also lame. He would never speak of how he lost his foot, but one of the boys told Raki that he had been burned in a prairie fire and a demon had prevented the wound from healing until the foot rotted off. He made all the pottery, except some of the roughest food-bowls used by women, and beside his tepee he had a small pit full of red clay which was brought by canoe four days’ journey down-river. From this he made water-jars, the bowls used by the Chief and the Elders, and everything considered worthy of decoration. Most of the decoration was wavy lines and dots and sometimes a row of little crosses. Tannek had warned me that they meant snakes and stars and even birds and animals, so I was able to admire them properly, which pleased Minshi so much that he gave me some of the clay to make a food-bowl for Raki. Shaping it was much more difficult than it looked, but Minshi said the unevenness didn’t matter and he put it into the oven, a hole in the ground lined with stones, with a fire above it, to bake until the colours were set. Pigments were made from special rare clay, yellow and a dark, rich red. This was baked, ground to powder, and then mixed with white of egg. It was not always easy for Minshi to get enough eggs, so Raki and I used to find them for him…usually along the river bank; they had to be fresh or else they spoiled the final colours.

  Narrok, the tribal drummer, was also a Half-brother, for he was blind…though neither of us realized this until we had seen him several times, because he walked fast and without hesitation. Tannek told me he lost his sight through the ordeal which he hoped would have made him a Scarlet Feather, the highest honour to which any Redskin can attain, and before that he had been a famous tracker. Gradually, pace by pace, he learned the ground in every direction from his tepee, so that he no longer had to rely on a guide.

  Raki and I had been up-river in our canoe and were returning in the early evening when we heard the muffled beat of a drum. We took our paddles from the water and drifted in silence to listen where the sound came from. It seemed to come from a thicket of young alders on the south bank, so we tied the canoe to a tree growing by the water and crept through the undergrowth until we reached a glade.

  Narrok was sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree with the drum between his knees. He was tapping it with his long, flexible hands, the rhythm steady as the heart of a man asleep, and my heart steadied to the same beat. His eyes were open; they seemed to see us, and beyond to a far horizon. The sound belonged to the trees, and to the water and the rocks, and to us, as though we were all part of a living body whose heart was the Great Hunters. The rhythm changed: it spoke of courage, and splendid battles, and the war cries of Braves in victory. Then it grew slower and heavier: it was after the battle, and Death Canoes were going down-river to their last sunset…the Chief was standing by the “pool of falling water” holding my mother in his arms before he gave her to the Before People. I felt a tear slide down my cheek, and yet the sadness of the drum was beautiful as the crying of curlews through the mist of a winter evening.

  I do not think he can have heard us, yet when his hands let the drum fall asleep, he said:

  “There are two people listening…young and happy. Is it Raki and Piyanah?”

  We came forward and sat on the grass beside him.

  “I am glad you understand the language of the drums,” he said. “There are very few who understand. What did they say to you?”

  I tried to tell him about the trees and the rocks being part of a living being who is the Earth, and of the joy of battle and the sorrow which followed after.

  He smiled. “So I have not betrayed my drum. When my eyes said they would no longer serve me, I asked the Great Hunters that I might learn to use my inward sight. For a long time I thought they had not heard me, for the night in which I lived remained unbroken. The tribal drummer was old and could no longer keep rhythm from dawn until sunset…and I was young, and blind…and useless. It was the Chief who asked me to learn the language of the drums in service to the tribe; and for the first time the long night was a kindly darkness.

  “I am no longer blind, Piyanah. There are eyes in my hands, and they know the texture of bark and of leaves, the colour of a stone, the humour of a plant, whether it is sad or singing. Out of the darkness I have made a little Earth: I know each path and where the trees are spaced; even if I walk a long way I know what the next pace will bring, turf or gravel or smooth rock to my feet. And in the drum I can see battles which have been forgotten, and mountains we have never crossed, and sunsets which belong to the generations.”

  “Can you see the Before People?” asked Raki eagerly.

  “Are they the Singing People…who laugh, and are young even when their bodies grow old?”

  “They must be the same,” I said. “They had white houses, and trees with yellow fruit, so heavy that I could only hold one of them between my hands.”

  “I cannot remember their houses…only their songs. I hear them always behind the voices of my drum, between their sound and silence.”

  After this, Narrok was our friend, but he told us not to tell anyone that we talked to him. “For,” he said, “it is only with you I wish to share my silence.”

  His loyalty to the Chief would not let him speak against the tribe, but he let us understand that he, too, felt a stranger among them.

  “I loved my mother,” he said, “but she never told me the name of my father, only that he was a Scarlet Feather. She made me promise to be worthy of him…she died soon after I went to live with the boys, so I could not ask her to release me from my promise. I was a Brown Feather when I was seventeen, though I found it difficult to remember the importance of endurance, to believe that a cliff was a challenge to the climber and not a curve against the sky to be enjoyed.

  “Perhaps that is why my eyes deserted me, because I refused so many things they brought me and kept them about such ordinary tasks. They told me to delight in a flock of white birches on the mountain-side; and I said to them, ‘Birches? How far are they from the river? Is their bark ready for canoes?’ They showed me trout, fluid as water among the reeds; and I said to them, ‘Where is the exact place to cast a fish-spear?’ They showed me a doe, standing with one forefoot lifted in dappled shade; and I said to them, ‘She is in her third year; meat for the cooking-pot.’ They showed me the river in flood; and I said to them,’ The pack-ice will make it too dangerous for canoes; our journey must be delayed three days.’ My eyes offered me joy, but I valued them only because they were useful in little things that do not matter to the spirit.”

  “When did your eyes go away?” I said.

  “At the Gathering of the Thirty Tribes, which takes place every seven years. The Braves vie with each other, and the Chiefs boast which of them has the most wearers of the Scarlet. To earn the title of Scarlet Feather you must be a full member of the tribe and then pass an ordeal to prove that you have overcome fear. The ordeal is chosen by the Chiefs in council, and they make very sure that it tests you to the utmost. At the Place of the Gathering there is a rock above the river, called the Eagle Rock. It leaps from the water the height of twenty men standing on each other’s shoulders, and the pool below it is so narrow that only a perfect dive can end in safety.

  “Many had died there in the past. I thought beyond the water I might find the land of the singing; but if this was denied to me I should have fulfilled my promise and wear the Scarlet in my forehead-thong. I knew as I fell towards the pool that I was too far from the rock. I felt my hands break the surface; then a dull blow and a whirling darkness…a darkness that has gone on and on. …There was no welcome for me beyond the water, so I wait here until the drums of the Great Hunters tell me I am free to go.”

  Feathers of the Future

  The actions of the Chief cannot be question
ed, but we knew that the tribe were anxious and disturbed because one morning my father’s tepee had been found empty and for seven days he had not been seen.

  Without being told, we knew he had come back, for the encampment suddenly lost the feeling of unspoken tension. We had just finished the dawn meal when he sent for us. If he had been an ordinary person instead of a Chief, I should have thought he was embarrassed, but that was impossible, for he was too remote and austere to know what real people felt like.

  “It is not customary for a Chief to claim he has made a false decision, nor for a father to admit error to his children; but it is now necessary for me to do both these things, in loyalty to your mother.” His face was impassive, but I knew that to say this was causing him great effort.

  “Your mother told you of the Before People.” He said this not as a question but to tell us that he knew it, so neither Raki nor I spoke.

  “She told me of the Before People, but because of my pride I did not believe her: how could the son of the Chief learn wisdom from a squaw? But now her spirit has come to me, at the pool where I said farewell to her body; though of what I saw there I cannot speak even to you. To her I made an oath, the oath of a Chief which can never be broken; that what remains of my life on this side of the water shall be used to make reparation, so that one day she will take me to join her in the Land beyond the Sunset.”

  I felt a warm spring of affection for him bubble up inside me. He had loved my mother, and he still loved her. It was only because he had forgotten how to let love shine out of him that he seemed so cold and alone.

  “The words of your mother, to which I had not the wisdom to listen, have become to me the law greater than all other laws. She said that the way of the Before People was the way of the Great Hunters. I had not the courage to believe her, but now she has shared with me her courage, which was always greater than mine even though I am a Scarlet Feather and she a woman.

  “She told me that the meaning of the legends was not understood even by the Elders, and that of all these the legend of the First Red Man has been the most distorted. For generations, men have believed that they are the children of the Great Hunters, who, when they have passed the last ordeals, will return to the Land without Shadows. We have been taught that women have no such immortality; that woman was given to man only to bring forth the fruit of his seed and to do for him such tasks as are too lowly for him. We believed that Earth was made for man; the fish for him to spear, the deer for him to hunt, the corn for him to plant. We believed that the seasons of the year are sent to teach him their qualities; so that he may grow strong in the conquering of winter and gain endurance from the long heat. All this I believed: because I had not learned that in your mother’s voice was wisdom; and in mine, only the utterances of a blind man who says there are no stars because he cannot see them.”

  “When are you going to tell the tribe that they must follow the Before People?” I asked eagerly.

  “They would not believe me. Why should they, when I did not believe your mother?”

  “But if you told them, they would have to believe you, because you are the Chief.”

  “Had I taken your mother to live at my side they would no longer have acknowledged my authority. It is the new Chief, Raki and Piyanah, to whom they will listen.”

  “Both of us to be the Chief?” I asked.

  “Both of you; and you need not wait until my death, for you will lead your own tribe when you have become ‘proud with feathers’.”

  From the cedar-wood chest he took the great headdress which he wore in council and on all ceremonial occasions. “This has been worn by my father, and my father’s father, for nine generations. With you it must find new life. Each feather should be a symbol of something the Chief has brought to the tribe: scarlet for an act of special courage, yellow for the wisdom of a new law, white for a vision of the unseen things.”

  “There are three black feathers. What do they mean?” said Raki. “I thought that black feathers always belong to the Enemy.”

  “They are supposed to record a victory, in the far past, over the children of the Carrion Crow. But your mother told me they should mean that the Chief had gone down into the Underworld to rescue one of his people from the Lord of the Dark Moon.”

  “Is the Underworld the same as the Cavern of the Blind Fish?” I said, remembering the legend of the boy who had gone there to get the second pair of eyes which restored sight to his twin brother.

  “I cannot tell you; for I have never been there.”

  “Do the Blind Fish exist, or are they only a legend?”

  “I cannot tell you; for I have never seen them.”

  “What ordeals shall we have to pass before we become ‘proud with feathers’?” asked Raki.

  “It is to tell you the nature of these ordeals that I have brought you here,” said Na-ka-chek. “Your mother, whose voice is truth, told me that even if my Braves increased tenfold, no arrow of theirs could kill the Sorrow Bird while men and women are still divided against each other. She said that the strongest warrior was a cripple if he had not a woman for his dear companion, and that a squaw who had borne many children was barren unless she loved their father. In you and Raki I have seen the truth of her words; now you must learn to teach her truth to your people.”

  “If they won’t listen to you, why should they listen to us?” said Raki.

  “Because you will become the bridge by which they can cross the Canyon of Separation. Each of you must learn to be neither man nor woman. Raki will be the ‘not-man,’ Piyanah the ‘not-woman’. Each of you must gain a brown feather; but during the seven years that will prepare you for the ordeals, Raki will live as a squaw; until he has learned to think as a woman, and can speak to them in a voice which they understand because it is their own. Piyanah will live as a boy; she will learn to think as they do, feel as they do, challenge their hard endurance with her own. Only when they have had to accept her as one of themselves will they believe that woman is the equal of man. In Piyanah, their fellow Brave, they will see all women as worthy companions. In Raki, all squaws will see the men they need no longer fear, the men who will no longer despise them. Then will Raki and Piyanah be the Chief of a new tribe, in which the men and women will honour each other in equality, and bear children in whom the Before People will live again on this side of the water.

  “At the next full moon Raki will go to the Squaws’ Tepees and Piyanah will join the boys. It will be as though the Canyon separated you also: Piyanah who has begun her warrior training will not speak to Raki the squaw. But in seven years two Feathered Headdresses shall be made, for Raki and Piyanah, the Chief of a tribe whose happy voices will be heard by your mother in the Land without Shadows.”

  Then, without waiting for us to answer, he told us to leave him, but as I went out of the tepee I heard him say softly, “When your mother hears their voices perhaps she will allow Na-ka-chek, who was blind, to come to ask for her forgiveness, because she knows he has fulfilled her dreams.”

  When we left the Great Tepee, Raki led the way among the winter birch trees to the rock where Mother had waited for us, when we first learned why we were not the same as other people. The silence was deep as a snow-drift; far away, muffled by the cold, I heard the hunting bark of a coyote. Raki stood looking across the falling shadows of the lower slopes to the distant mountains. Then he said:

  “Everything we can see, even the patterns our snow-shoes made yesterday, is unchanged; only you and I are different. We are going to follow the Before People, and because of us the squaws and the Braves will laugh together, and their children will not be frightened by legends, for we shall have killed the Sorrow Bird.”

  One phrase of my father’s stood out like fresh blood on snow, “For seven years you and Raki must live apart.” Surely Raki had heard it too?

  “Raki, you are talking as if it were really going to happen. Didn’t you hear him say it would be seven years before we passed the ordeals and could be togeth
er?”

  “Until we are ready to lead our own tribe.”

  “I don’t want to be a Chief! I want to stay as we are, you and I together, always.”

  “Because we love each other we can never really be lonely, but we can’t let the rest of the tribe go on living as unhappy strangers just because we haven’t the courage to be parted for a little while.”

  “Seven years isn’t a little while! Raki, don’t go away from me. I’m frightened, Raki, and you never let me be frightened by things other people tell us.”

  He jumped down from the rock and put his arms around me. “You’re crying, Piyanah, and you never cry. Think of how we are going to teach other people to be happy.”

  “How can we teach them to be happy when we shall have forgotten what it feels like! Mother told us that it was because the tribe had forgotten how to laugh that they couldn’t remember the Before People. Don’t you remember her story about the girl and the hunter, whom the animals protected because they had the light on their foreheads which comes from loving someone more than yourself? We’ve got that light, Raki, and if we are parted it will go out and we shall be alone in the dark.”

  “It will be very difficult for a girl to become a Brown Feather,” he said slowly. “If you are less swift, they will say you are a stone in their moccasins; and if you are better at the things they do, they will be jealous, and cruel.”

  “I’m not frightened of them. It’s being parted from you I’m afraid of.”

  “It’s only for seven years. Perhaps it will be less if we learn very fast.”

  “You talk of seven years as though they were seven days! Being without you will be worse than being without food or water; it will be like not being able to breathe.”

  “Seven years is a very long time. …I had forgotten how long it was going to be before we shall be ready to lead our own tribe.” Then, as though thinking aloud, “Three died in the ordeals last year. It will be worse for Piyanah than for me…her body is not so strong as mine.”