Scarlet Feather

by Joan Grant

  I bit my arm, and then more deeply until a mouthful of blood softened my tongue, which had grown hard and swollen with thirst:

  “Raki! Raki!”

  I tried to shout louder than that pitiful croak.

  “Raki!”

  My voice must have carried a long way in that still air, for I heard their answering shout.

  “We have found water…plenty of water…only half a day’s journey to a river!”

  They walked upright in triumph, as do men who have proved their vision. I saw our people stumbling towards them, towards Raki and Tekeeni who brought life out of the South.

  Place of the Corn-growing

  We stayed three days beside the water that had given us life: only a series of shallow pools threaded by a stream, but to me stronger than a river of many rapids. During the second night I woke in the clear starlight, and saw three figures going into the desert. I shook Raki gently to wake him, for I thought they might be walking in their sleep, driven by a dream that they must still search for water.

  “It is Kekki and the other two men whose wives died out there,” said Raki. “They are going to put full water-skins beside the women, who may not yet have reached the Great River.”

  The others must have guessed why they had gone, for no one mentioned their absence. The next night I heard them coming back. I do not know how deeply they mourned: they gave no sign of grief unless it was to become impassive as ordinary Redskins.

  It was thinking about them that made me say to Raki:

  “Why is it that we often hear our people quarrelling—and even sometimes quarrel ourselves? I never heard the men of the Two Trees raise their voices except in cold, disciplined anger, and though the women quarrelled among themselves they never did so in the hearing of the Chief or the Elders. And for anyone to weep even in privacy was bitter shame.”

  “The old rule taught us to conceal our feelings, for any emotion was a weakness to be overcome. But we have learnt that love is the source of life and that love cannot be shut away to be used by expediency. Love heightens feeling and changes the cold black and white of habit into many colours. There is no light without a shadow, and I think that every shade of feeling has its sombre opposite. The weak man may learn to be impassive, but the strong man can live by love because he is not afraid of hatred.”

  “Raki, I had never seen a man weep until Gorgi wept at Dorrok’s death.”

  “He wept because he had learned to love, for we had taught him to feel.”

  “Will they be grateful, Raki, when they discover that in teaching them to accept emotion we have opened their hearts to hatred and quarrels as well as to love?”

  “Do you love me less, Piyanah, because sometimes we disagree? Do you realize that when we were children we never quarrelled. You never slapped me, and I never pulled your hair?”

  “Perhaps we never wanted to. Or was it because we had been taught that every action had an unnatural importance? They tried to teach us never to be natural, always to behave according to tradition.”

  “How many times, Piyanah, has a thorn worked deep into your foot because tradition decreed that it would be weak to take it out before the leader of the file had given the signal to rest? Quarrels may be a way of pulling out a thorn before it works into the flesh, and impassivity the cause of a festering wound.”

  I smiled. “Then the Heron is moving in the right direction; for I have heard men quarrelling with their wives in a way which would have horrified the Elders.”

  “Does it matter very much, when they have also learned to laugh with them?”

  When we were ready to go on we kept down-stream, for although we had reached the southern boundary of the desert we were reluctant to leave the sound of running water. Gradually the scrub gave place to richer vegetation, and we could see hills in the distance. Then, twenty-two days after we had left the Blue Smokes, our stream led us to a wide river which ran through meadows thick with flowers. We might have stayed there if I had not so clearly remembered the place of the corn-growing which Na-ka-chek had shown to me.

  The hills swelled into bold, well-wooded curves; of trees that were familiar and others whose names we did not know. We saw no sign of old watch-fires, and the birds and animals were so tame that we felt sure it could never have been a tribal hunting-ground.

  It was against the rising moon that I saw the shape of a remembered hill. “Raki! Raki, that is where we shall set our tepee!”

  As I spoke two herons flew overhead, so I knew Na-ka-chek was well pleased. He had even made white and scarlet flowers grow in the meadow where he wished us to cut the first furrow for our corn-growing. There was level ground for more cultivation even than the wide fields of the Blue Smokes; and beyond it the woods rose to a grassy plateau, tree-shaded and sheltered by a great boulder creviced with ferns and gentle with moss. Here was our tepee set, and before it we kindled the first watch-fire of the Heron’s place of the corn-growing.

  I was glad that my child would be the first-born of the tribe, for I should need the authority of experience to calm the fears of other women. When Raki and I had decided that none of the Old Women should come with us, we had forgotten how much their birth rituals gave courage to the squaws; it had been easy for Piyanah the Scarlet Feather to dismiss this lore as superstition, but as the clean lines of my body began to blur I found myself sympathizing with fears I used to despise.

  I kept on reminding myself that everybody had been born the same way, yet I felt that I was not only the first of the Heron who was going to find out what it was really like to bear a child, but the first of all women. I was afraid, more afraid, I thought, even than I had been in the ordeals. I must make the others realize that male children do not come out through a split in the belly. It must be nonsense that if a woman is not bandaged with the proper cotton and rituals, she will bleed to death.

  Rokeena’s child would be born soon after mine, yet I could not prevent myself sharing my fears with her.

  “Rokeena, while you were in the Squaws’ Tepees are you sure none of the women who had borne sons looked under their birth-bandages to see if there really was a wound?”

  “If they did they never admitted it…how could they, when they believed that seeing the belly before the seventh day would let the baby be taken by a demon?”

  “When do you think the belly opens?”

  “They don’t know. They are given a sleep-drink before the child is born so that they can’t remember what happens…except that it is very painful.”

  “Raki says it is only superstition, and I’m sure he is right. Old Women don’t know any real magic. Think of how they said you would always be lame. Did they cure you?”

  “No, it was Raki who cured me.”

  “That proves he knows more than they do.” I sighed. “It used to be so easy to be scornful of the things the squaws believed. I know a bear, and a hind, and a woman give birth in the same way, and of course it is not at all frightening…but sometimes one forgets it is quite natural and ordinary.”

  “If the skin splits it ought to leave a scar, and it doesn’t, because I have often seen squaws naked who have had several children, and they didn’t look any different to us.”

  I was ashamed of having to be reassured by Rokeena and said, in what I hoped was a brisk and confident voice, “We are fools…of course it doesn’t split. I am a Chief, and yet because my belly is as swollen as a drowned rat’s I behave as though I were blind as a maggot!”

  If it had not been for Rokeena, who because of Raki thought I could never feel or act like a fool, those slow moons would have made me despair for the future of the Heron. Gradually I became further estranged from the other women, as they reverted to the superstitions of which we had hoped they were free. They blamed me for bringing them South, and so putting the barrier of the Great Thirst between them and the people of the old tradition. They were not bitter with Raki, for as he was a man they expected his decisions to be beyond their comprehension; decisions which wer
e sure to be unreasonable but which must be accepted without question according to the custom. Yet now that my body showed that I shared the weakness of squaws they took little notice when I tried to reason with them. They whispered that I had a store of the sacred cotton and refused to share it, and some even dared to say that Raki had been taught the rituals by Nona and that I should be the only one who would live to see her son.

  I was really angry with them when they began to ask the Great Hunters to send them daughters so as to protect them from the dangers of bringing forth sons, but it produced little effect. I knew I had failed with them when I saw they still refused to touch a knife, or an arrow, or a fish-spear; all of which are associated with the birth of sons.

  Raki decreed that each woman was to bear her child alone with her husband, so that he would understand what it was like: the men were more afraid of this than if he had ordered them to collect the claws of ten bears in the season of cubs!

  It was only when Raki kept telling me that it was as easy for a woman to bear a child as for a goat to have a kid that I realized he was just as worried as any of the others. I knew he would never lie to me if I asked him a direct question, and I determined that the barrier of pretence which had grown between us must be broken down…even if in so doing I added to my fears.

  “Raki, do you really know anything about birth? Know because you have seen and not only just because you want to believe?”

  “How many more times must I tell you that it is only reasonable that children of both sexes should be born in the same way?”

  “I don’t want to know what’s reasonable, I want to know what’s true!”

  “Reason and truth are the same.”

  “Was it reasonable to take a tribe into a strange country without recognizing how ignorant we were? I didn’t have a chance to find out the really important things…you lived in the Squaws’ Tepees, I didn’t! What did you think you were there for? It is very easy to laugh at superstitions, but it’s no use being superior unless you know more than other people do.”

  Part of me could still stand aside watching Piyanah behave like the child who used to decoy Ninee into anger, but the rest of me was desperately serious, “Do you really know what happens…it’s no use trying to pretend if you don’t.”

  Raki was smiling, as he often smiled when I told him of a petty quarrel which belonged to somebody else, and he said soothingly, “I thought that since you had watched the kid. …”

  I interrupted, “If you tell me again that I have only to consider how easily goats have kids, I shall forget that Scarlet Feathers are impassive or that a woman should honour the man who takes her for his squaw!”

  Even then he did not realize I was angry, and instead of answering he pointed out through the open tepee-flap and said, “Tekeeni is coming up from the river, and he has caught so many fish he can hardly carry them.”

  He went on carving the haft of a fish-spear: calm and imperturbable, pretending he could change the mood of a woman by ignoring her. How dare he ignore me! Suddenly I remembered how I had often longed to throw something at the Elders as they sat by the watch-fire so aggressively undisturbed by the sound of quarrelling from the Squaws’ Tepees. I was no longer Piyanah watching herself being foolish…we were one person: the angry woman and the angry child. Before we began talking I had been scouring a cooking-pot with sand. …

  I saw it glance off the side of his head. He put up his hand involuntarily, and then went on with his carving as though nothing had happened. Blood trickled from his hair above the right temple and dripped off the angle of his jaw. Suddenly I forgot everything except that Raki was hurt, and it was my fault.

  “Please forgive me, Raki! Does it hurt very much? I didn’t know it was so heavy and I didn’t really mean to throw it at you. But I knew you were going to tell me about the kid again, and I couldn’t bear it…please, Raki, don’t hide things from me and I promise I won’t be a coward any more.”

  He took me in his arms, “You are never a coward, my Piyanah. I am the coward, for I dared not admit even to myself that you might be in any danger. Nearly all the time I am sure that nothing terrible is going to happen; and then I start thinking about the Birth Tepee and the sound of women screaming before the cry of the child. And then I am terrified, Piyanah; that’s why I keep on telling us both it’s not dangerous, not even so dangerous as taking a canoe down a very small rapid.”

  I wasn’t frightened or alone any more: nothing could be horrible if Raki and I shared it, nothing could be really dangerous if we fought it together. I was strong and happy and free: I was his mother as well as the mother of his unborn child.

  “I am so happy, Raki…and I don’t think there is going to be a scar on your forehead, or only a very little one hidden under your hair.”

  He laughed and held me closer. “If our son excels at throwing we shall always know how he learned it!”

  Throwing the cooking-pot at Raki taught me something I had not known before. It taught him something too, and after that he never hid his thoughts from me, for we both realized there are occasions when it is difficult to be both reasonable and a woman. I had not only lived as a man but thought as a man, and I had become intolerant. Although in a few days Raki’s wound was healed, for the rest of our life if he thought I was being too adamant in my opinions, he used to put his hand to his temple as though to adjust the fore-head thong: and I would be more kindly in memory of an angry woman.

  The First-born

  Now that I could again tell Raki whenever I had even a twinge of fear, it was much easier to be sympathetic with the other women, for I recognized that the barrier had been reared by the resentment I felt when their fears increased my own. I was at last able to reassure them, and further increased their confidence by promising that if either my child or I died they should have some of the ritual bandages before their children were born. Gorgi and Tekeeni asked to be allowed to cross the Great Thirst to get these from the Blue Smokes. Knowing the quality of the Old Women we had seen there, I was sure they possessed all the trappings of superstition.

  When this was known, even the most apprehensive women became confident; instead of regarding me as a tyrant they seemed to think I deserved another scarlet feather for risking my life in their defence. I laughed, and said it was Gorgi and Tekeeni who deserved the Scarlet, but they appeared to think that crossing the Thirst was nothing in comparison with having a baby.

  I had expected them to protest when I told them that their babies were not to be wrapped like cocoons until the third moon, as had been the custom with the Two Trees. Instead they were eager that the new generation should have the same freedom as Mother had given to Raki and me. They made rush baskets lined with dry moss, wove blankets for coverings, and agreed that it would be much better for a baby to lie in such a cradle than to be carried everywhere on the mother’s back.

  Although our tepee was apart from the main encampment, I thought that as soon as the birth began, the women, and probably the men too, would gather round to hear without delay the news for which they were all so anxiously waiting. I remembered the screams which had been heard from the Birth Tepee…Piyanah the Scarlet Feather would never scream, but would Piyanah the woman have the same endurance?

  I longed to go into the forest with Raki to have the baby in privacy, but we reluctantly agreed that if we did so the others might think we went there to work some secret rite by which I alone could be protected. It would be easy for them to start being superstitious again, for when I saw how tightly the skin was stretched over my round belly it was sometimes difficult to be sure it was not going to split open like a seed-pod.

  For two days the valley had been ominous with the threat of thunder: the sky was yellow with heat and the sound of water oppressive as the drone of insects. Even my baby was drowsy, for he had not stirred since early morning. If I had been alone I should have stayed in the tepee during the heat of the day, instead of going with Raki to see how the new fish-trap was progressin
g. While he talked to Kekki, who had been driving stakes in the bed of a stream where it entered the main river, I walked further along the bank to a shallow pool where I could lie full length in the sun-warmed water. It refreshed me, and on the way home I lost some of the heaviness brought by the brooding heat.

  Even after sunset it was too hot to sleep, so I lay with my head on Raki’s shoulder. We talked of our little valley, and of how we had never really believed we should grow beyond the years of separation into this secure happiness.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “when I undo the flap of our tepee I still wonder what I am going to see. Will it be your mother coming to take us down to the river; or our Twin Pine; or the Naked Foreheads scouring the cooking-pots in which Raki the Squaw must prepare food for the Two Trees?”

  “Dear Raki, our today is made of so many yesterdays. …”

  “And the Piyanah I love is made of so many people; the little girl, the Young Brave, the Chief.”

  “But I’m not the little girl any more; she died when we had to grow up.”

  “Yes, you are; and you are also the mother of my children. When you speak, or think, or act, you are all of you, for the child and the long-in-years are both part of the total you, like the thousands of strands which together make the pattern of a blanket. Our child is not yet born, but the arrows he will flight are already singing, and the colours of the feathers he will wear are instinct in his sunrise.”

  “Our son must often smile at the foolishness of his parents, for from his star he can command a much wider horizon than either of us. He can say, ‘I am Miyak, the mighty hunter, the proud with feathers,’ or, ‘I am Miyak, who died when he was born.’ He knows which it will be, but from us it is still hidden by the river-mist of time.”

  “Why do you always talk of our child as a son? It is our first law that men and women are equals; why should we value a son more than a daughter?”

  “I am not yet ready for a daughter. A son will see with your eyes and a daughter with mine, and you have always learned to see things clearly before I did. If I had a daughter the others would still be afraid to bear sons…you are still afraid for me, aren’t you Raki? Why should you be afraid? Why should either of us spoil the rejoicing by this prelude of fear?”