Scarlet Feather

by Joan Grant

  They were glad that their bodies were not lean and hard. “Is not a fat hind preferable to a starveling?” they asked. “And does not a wood pigeon with a full crop make a more comfortable sound than a hungry jay?” Instead of boasting of the deeds of their Braves, they told us with pride that the son of their Chief had made a new fish-trap, which was much less trouble to look after than any previously built and yet caught the same number of fish. Instead of scalps, they talked of shrubs and trees which had been brought to their valley to provide fruit and berries pleasurable to the tongue, and had been planted close to their encampment to be gathered without effort.

  “How do you keep your people busy?” asked Raki. “If life is so easy for them, don’t they quarrel among themselves?”

  “If one of us is quarrelsome he is told to go away until he has defeated the demon which tried to make him bring discord to the watch-fire.”

  “what happens if he refuses to go?” I said.

  “He does not refuse,” said the Smiling Valley gently. “It is against our laws, and if he disobeys…then we have a feast to forget the sorrow we feel because one of us has been disobedient.”

  “Does he mind your feeling sorry?”

  “No, he does not mind,” said the Smiling Valley with the same gentleness. “Or if he minds, it does not worry us; for he is dead. It is the only sin which is punished by death among our people, the sin of deliberately making other people unhappy. It is our first law, for unhappiness makes people have pains in the belly and brings many kinds of sickness, and then they weep, and grow thin, and die.”

  “But you haven’t told us how you keep busy,” said Raki.

  “We think; of the past, or of the future, or of today: whichever be more pleasant…if they are all of equal excellence we think of all three at the same time.”

  We did not ask the Smiling Valleys to come to our encampment, for we knew that our legends would be shocking to them. They were people who would be horrified to hear that we thought it better to run than to walk, to walk than to stand still, to stand than to lie down: who thought it gave merit to eat as little as possible, to climb a cliff where there are the fewest handholds, to run until you drop with exhaustion. These stories would not inspire them with admiration, but with sorrow and foreboding for a tribe so foolish that it must surely disappear from the Earth.

  As we walked back to our camping-ground, Raki said, “They have time to think, Piyanah. We need not follow them in being fat or lazy, but we need time to think. Our winter is too long and cold…it is difficult to think when you are cold, except of how to keep warm and of whether your belly will ever feel comfortably full again…and so much of our summer is spent in preparing for the winter.”

  “Yes, we all need time to think. Long thoughts, which are like the pinion feathers by whose strength a bird can fly.”

  “Piyanah! We will take our people South, where they can learn that endurance is not all a man needs before he can be welcomed into the Land beyond the Sunset.”

  “Yes, Raki,” I said, “we will go South.”

  Feathered Council

  Every evening another tribe arrived, until by the eighth day, which was the full moon, all the Thirty were assembled and the great feast took place which celebrated that the Moon of the Council had begun. Raki and I attended Na-ka-chek, sitting behind him by the watch-fire of the Great Tepees. All the Chiefs were splendid with feathers, their robes richly embroidered, some with beads, some with porcupine quills or feathers. Even among this magnificence, the Chief of the Leaping Waters outshone the rest, for his long green robe was covered with gold plaques, shaped like birds and fish, each so highly burnished that it glittered with life in the firelight.

  Each Chief was attended by the son or blood-kin chosen to succeed him. The young men stared at Raki and me; perhaps they were surprised because there were two of us. Had I known it was the custom for each Chief to announce why he had chosen the name of his successor and the reason why he had been chosen, I should have been nervous before the feast. Perhaps so much rich food, and the kindly drink, made from honey and certain herbs which do not grow in our own hunting-grounds, gave me confidence; for it is difficult to be afraid when your body is content, unless it is directly threatened.

  Each youth stared straight in front of him while his qualities were being extolled. I could not think of what they reminded me, until I remembered the squaws at the Choosing. At the end of each speech there was silence, the sign of agreement, though had he been considered unworthy to join the council, if the present Chief should die during the next seven years, he would be required to give further proof of his powers of leadership and his knowledge of the tribal laws.

  My father was the last to speak. When I knew that Raki and I had to step forward, to be stared at by those proud, aloof faces which the fire beckoned from the shadows, my legs suddenly felt as though they had been running until they could not carry me any further.

  “Steady, Piyanah!” Raki’s voice was only a whisper, but my body heard it too and became obedient.

  White and yellow, blue and green and scarlet; a wall of mighty feathers surrounded us. Eyes, implacable as hawks, cold, unwavering. Hands, placid as the smoke which rose from the long pipes. I, too, must be calm and impassive. I chose a star low on the horizon, and swore that my eyes should not turn away from it nor the lids flicker. …

  My father’s voice was calm and unhurried: “I, Na-kachek, Chief of the Two Trees, have led my people to a place where the path forks, between the old way and the new. I am too full of years to go into the hills of the unknown future; but these two together will rule after me, and will take those of my people who wish to follow them, to find a new land under their own totem.”

  He paused, to give added significance to his next words: “Never before has a Chief chosen a man and a woman to rule in equality.”

  No one moved, but I felt the tension his words produced grow until I thought I could have touched it with my hands.

  “I repeat: a new tribe shall be led by a man and a woman in equality, by Raki and Piyanah. They will act as one person, and speak with one voice in council. Those of my people who wish to keep to the old way will stay with me, and choose their own successor to take my place when I die. You have never seen a woman at your council, yet there is no law against it. It is said that a Brave must inherit: the training which Piyanah has undergone has been no less arduous than that of any other Brown Feather. She wears seven bear-claws, and has killed a running hind with a single arrow at two hundred paces. She has asked no clemency, and in battle she killed a Black Feather and took his scalp.

  “All that she has done, so has Raki done also. They are the bow and the bowstring, the arrow and the quiver, the morning and the evening of their days. If anyone doubts her strength let him give her challenge; or else acknowledge the new tribe, which in the spring of next year will follow their dual Chief to the land of their future.”

  The silence was deep as that which follows the roar of thunder. Then a youth, who belonged to the yellow-skinned tribe, said in a harsh voice:

  “I, T’cha, will not sit in council with a squaw.”

  “A man cannot refuse to sit in council with his equals,” said Na-ka-chek.

  “No squaw is a man’s equal! You cannot turn weakness into strength by putting a brown feather in a forehead-thong. To have a woman in our council would be to dishonour the feathers. They have always been held in veneration, and now you turn them into an ornament for your squaw!”

  “Her symbol is as true as your own,” said my father. “If you doubt its colour, why not prove its quality by giving her a challenge?”

  The youth sneered, “I do not fight with women…nor eat carrion.”

  At this further insult some of the Chiefs turned to stare at the speaker in cold disapproval while the rest ignored him. I think they might have agreed with T’cha had he used words of suitable dignity; but the laws of courtesy were strict and not to be violated without rebuke.


  Then spoke the Chief of the Leaping Waters: “It appears that this young man has been too occupied with learning the arts of the warrior to have had sufficient opportunity to learn the arts of the council, among which is a seemly choice of words. As he is determined not to sit in council with the Daughter of Na-ka-chek, would it not be agreeable to us all if contests were to be arranged between them; the winner to be accepted by us, the loser to be rejected from any place in our future councils?”

  This speech won general approval, some of the old men even permitting themselves the indulgence of a smile. The Yellow Skin had to accept, though he did so with as little grace as he dared. He sneered at me, and for the first time I looked forward to the contest, for wiping the sneer from his face would be better than scalping a Black Feather.

  When the oldest Chief rose to his feet as a sign that the council was concluded, I should have liked to stay to talk with some of the sons, but Raki told me, rather sharply, to come back to our camping-ground. I wondered what had annoyed him, until he said, as soon as we had gone far enough not to be overheard:

  “Your father is a fool to let you take up that challenge. That man is more dangerous than a Black Feather; he will try to kill you.”

  “I am not going to be killed, Raki. I am going to lead a new tribe with you, to the South.”

  “You may be confident once too often, Piyanah! If I had let you meet any of the others, you might have given another challenge…that is why I hurried you away. You are feeling full of courage now, but by tomorrow you may feel different…and you will not have a chance to change your mind.”

  “I don’t want to change it, Raki,” I said indignantly. “I want to see those sneering eyes pop out of that yellow face because my thumbs are pressing into the corners of them. I want to see his canoe split open in the rapids, while mine rushes past and I turn to laugh at the expression on his face as it is sucked down by the water.”

  “The mead is talking out of your mouth, Piyanah. It makes you think that you like killing people, and you know you hate killing even a deer.”

  “Killing a deer is much worse than killing that yellow horror…and I have always enjoyed killing snakes and spiders.”

  “You are frightened of rattle-snakes.”

  “Well, perhaps I am…but he is a snake that I am not afraid of…and I think it is unkind of you to try to make me think of being afraid.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?…it’s never any use trying to hide your feelings from me.”

  “Perhaps part of me is,” I admitted reluctantly, “but I shan’t listen to that part unless it shouts so loud I can’t help myself. I do wish you would stop being angry, Raki. If you don’t I shall be miserable, and if I am miserable I shall forget I am a Brave, and then I shall never be able to remember the right holds in the wrestling. Will one of the contests be wrestling, do you think?”

  “The Chiefs will decide that. If you had given the challenge, and it had been directly accepted, he would have had the choice; but now I suppose the council will choose them. I am not angry with you, Piyanah, but I am angry for you. Na-ka-chek had no right not to warn us of what was going to happen. When you had been Chief with me for seven years the council would have accepted you without question, and if they had tried to refuse you, then we could have kept away from the Gathering…it was the act of a fool to ask them to acknowledge you now.”

  “Why do you suppose he did it?”

  “Mead!” said Raki. “That is why I am so angry with him. Mead seems to breed conceit faster than dead meat breeds maggots. Na-ka-chek, a fool because he had drunk too much mead!”

  “Could it really have made any difference?”

  “If you don’t believe me, I will soon show you what it can do.”

  Instead of continuing towards our camping-ground he turned east. Even without the full moon the night would have been brilliant, for many people were carrying torches which added to the light of the fires.

  “There!” said Raki. “Mead can be strong as a tomahawk, though its effects don’t last so long.”

  Three men were sprawled on the ground, breathing heavily through their open mouths. Raki jostled one of them with his foot, but he only grunted and went on sleeping.

  “One of them is a Scarlet Feather,” said Raki disgustedly, “and there is another of them.”

  This man was lying on his face. I thought he was dead until suddenly he rolled over and began to mutter incoherently.

  “Not tens, but hundreds of them,” said Raki. “When the sun comes back tomorrow she will think there has been a battle…but none of them will have earned a funeral pyre.”

  “I expect the yellow viper will drink so much that his arms will snap like dead twigs and his legs become weak as rotten fungus,” I said hopefully, for Raki had managed to make me feel less enthusiastic for the contests.

  “It will be his last feast in any case, for if you don’t kill him, I shall.”

  “But you can’t kill him, Raki, if he wins in a fair fight…though he is not going to win, of course.”

  He swung me round, and gripped my shoulders so tightly that I nearly cried out. “We were tricked into this, so it is not your fault. But this is the last time that I am going to let you come into danger. You are my woman, even though I am not allowed to claim you yet. I shall kill any man who hurts you; cripple any man who insults you; break the right arm of any man who annoys you! That is my first law, and with me it overrules all others. So if you don’t enjoy watching massacres, Piyanah, you had better not provoke insults…unless you want them to be avenged.”

  The next morning, Raki said that until the Chiefs decided what form the contest between me and the Yellow Skin was to take I was not to enter for any of the other contests, in case I strained a muscle and so was at a disadvantage. When I protested that it was unfair to deprive me of this chance of proving that a squaw could be the equal of man in many things, he said:

  “You will have every opportunity to prove that against T’cha. It is better that he should continue to think you an unworthy opponent, for over-confidence is nearly as dangerous a companion as fear. Let him continue to drink mead, and feast; let him boast of the humiliation he will give to the arrogant squaw…and then there will be more words to choke him!”

  So I had to be content to watch Raki, and it was a rich contentment. In the wrestling bouts he was drawn first against one of the Leaping Waters, then against Braves from two of the northern tribes. Thereafter he was looked at with added respect by those who had been too stupid to recognize his quality before: a broken leg, a twisted shoulder, and a dislocated wrist are valuable as bear’s claws when they belong to your opponent!

  I should have liked to join in flighting arrows at the targets, especially when I saw that T’cha’s skill was less than mine. I hoped that he noticed Raki got seven arrows, at two hundred paces, into the painted deer which was no larger than a man’s hand, while he got only three. But they were in different groups, so it was unlikely that the Yellow Skin realized he had been outmatched by one of us.

  Watching contests became very monotonous after the first two days. All the trained runners were so swift that the extra pace of the winner made little difference except to his friends. One wrestling bout is very like another, unless you have an urgent reason for minding who wins…watching Raki was a pride and an agony, and it was a relief when Dorrok, Gorgi, and Tekeeni all won their bouts. Gorgi suffered the only injury, a badly sprained thumb against one of the Leaping Waters, which prevented his taking any further part in the contest of arrows.

  I was surprised to see that so many different types of slings were used: some tribes, instead of using any stone of a convenient size, had brought special ones with them, and other stones had a hole bored through them so that they could be carried on a thong. The contest of slings took place beyond the river, where there was a tract of marshy ground frequented by numerous wildfowl. Two men from each tribe took up position near the river bank, lots having been drawn to decide the o
rder of their stands. Squaws, who had been sent out early in the morning to hide in the reeds until they were given a signal, walked slowly in line towards the hunters, driving the birds in front of them.

  The highest score was fourteen, and neither of our men was in the first three. I was glad that Raki had not entered for this travesty of the art of the hunter. We had been taught that a man should kill his game instantly and without bringing it to fear, and the sight of this cloud of birds being driven blindly towards death disgusted us both. Often the kill was slovenly; a bird with a broken leg would escape to die slowly of starvation, another with a wing down would glide helplessly, and then try to run into the shelter of the reeds.

  Every night the Feathered Council assembled, the Chiefs together with the Elders, to settle the inter-tribal disputes which two Chiefs had not been able to decide between themselves. The Two Trees had no petition to make, so there was not even the interest of trying to forecast what kind of decision we might expect.

  The Elders were slow and deliberate of speech, their voices, devoid of any emotion, droned on, until several times Raki had to prod me to stop me falling asleep. Endless arguments and counter-arguments: as to the exact boundary between two hunting-grounds; whether a hunter had followed a deer on to the land of a neighbouring tribe without recognizing the landmarks, or had he deliberately failed to offer the customary haunch to the Chief on whose land he had made a kill? Was the deer wounded, and had the hunter followed it only to fulfill his obligations to a quarry? Was it more than five years old? How many deer had been killed in that season? Was the tribe in urgent need of meat?…So many words for so trivial a thing as a haunch of venison!