Peacemaker

by Joseph Bruchac

  Though the same age, Clouds Forming was a hand taller than Okwaho and just as strong. She could throw a spear as far and as accurately as boys who were winters older than her. Whenever the three of them wrestled, she won at least as often as either of the two boys. Then, when she had tripped or thrown one of them to the earth, she would sit on the chest of whomever she’d thrown to the ground, their dogs circling them and barking with excitement.

  “You,” she would say, her voice mock serious as she poked her vanquished opponent—usually Okwaho—in the chest with her finger, “you are going to have to grow stronger if you ever expect me to choose you for a husband. I will not bake marriage bread and take it to the mother of a weakling.”

  Then, she would hop up, grab Okwaho’s hand, and laugh as she pulled him to his feet.

  People joked about them being triplets or sewn together with an invisible cord, for they did almost everything together and seemed to feel the same way about everything. The three of them were like kernels from the same ear of corn.

  “How do you feel when a story is being told?” Okwaho had asked each of his friends in turn.

  “What do you mean?” Tawis asked. “I feel the warmth of the fire. I feel the deerskin underneath me. And sometimes I feel cool air on my back when someone opens the door flap of the longhouse.”

  Clouds Forming laughed and slapped Tawis playfully on his arm. “Stop being silly,” she said. “You know what Okwaho means.” Then she answered his question herself. “While we were listening to that story your mother just shared, I felt as if I was flying to the sky land along with Turkey Buzzard to bring back clothes for all the other birds. And I know you felt that way too, Tawis.” She lifted her hand as if to swat Tawis a second time and he scooted back from her.

  “Do not hit me again,” he said, making his voice small like that of a little child. “You are going to break my arm, you bully! You should be called Lightning Striking, not Clouds Forming.”

  Then Tawis grinned at Okwaho. “My friend, sometimes you are sooo serious,” he said. “But Clouds Forming is right. She is right twice. First, I was teasing you. Second, I always feel as if I am no longer inside our longhouse listening to a story. I feel as if I am part of the story. When that one was done, I had to look at my arms to make sure I was not covered with brown feathers like Turkey Buzzard.”

  Okwaho had gone to his mother after that conversation with his two friends.

  “I have a question,” he said.

  “You always do,” his mother replied. Then she smiled. “And I am always ready to try to answer you. Though I still cannot explain to you why water is wet and fire is hot.”

  “It is about stories,” Okwaho said, choosing not to laugh at his mother’s teasing. “Why are they so strong? Why do your stories always take me somewhere?”

  “Ah,” Wolf Woman said. “You are finally asking me an easy question, Okwaho. Stories are so strong because they are alive. A story is like someone you trust to take your hand, lead you on a journey, and then bring you back home again.”

  Okwaho had nodded at that answer. It had made it easier for him to understand why he and his friends felt as they did, not just during a story but after one had been told. It was as if they had been guided along a trail, sometimes one they’d traveled before and sometimes a new one, guided by someone like his mother or his uncle, someone who cared about them, showed them wonderful things along the way, and then brought them back to their longhouse safe and happy.

  Okwaho shook his head as he sat with his back against his mother’s longhouse. His best friend was gone. His other friend Clouds Forming was back in Onondaga and perhaps he would never see her again. Nothing made sense without them. What use was a story now?

  As Okwaho looked down, he saw a stone on the ground. He picked it up and hefted it. It was round and heavy, the size of one of the balls they used to play tewaraathon. It was the perfect size for throwing. It made him think again of Clouds Forming.

  She had always teased Okwaho about being stronger than he was, so that she could always throw a stone farther. It almost made him smile when he remembered that, for it was true. And he had never minded her being better than him at anything. He’d always enjoyed being around her, and that enjoyment had only become greater as they’d grown older.

  In fact, now that each of the friends had three handfuls of winters, Clouds Forming had become a good-looking young woman. And she was well aware of that.

  “Before long,” she would sometimes say to Okwaho and Tawis, “it will be time for me to choose a man to be my husband. To which of your mothers shall I bring marriage bread? Or should I just marry you both? I have no doubt that both of your mothers would gladly give you to me. After all, who would she ever want who was better than me?”

  All three of them had laughed at her gentle teasing. But the truth of it was that neither Tawis nor Okwaho would have minded a grown-up life where the three of them would always be together.

  She had wanted to come with them. But her family had chosen not to join the new village. As close relatives of Atatarho, how could they?

  So, for the first time in their lives, the three young people had been separated. Okwaho and Tawis were sad about many things involved in moving away from their familiar lives, but their separation from Clouds Forming made them saddest.

  It was Clouds Forming whom they saw last as they left the village among the hills. She had been standing by the opening of the huge stockade wall encircling the entire village. She had waved at them until they could no longer see her after turning onto the trail through the grove of maple trees.

  chapter four

  THE MORNING

  Okwaho lay on the sleeping rack against the southern wall of their longhouse. He did not want to rise. The constant burning of anger within him was not being cured by sleep. Whenever he did sleep, it gave him no rest. Either he found himself reliving the loss of his friend, trying to find a way for Tawis to escape, or he saw himself as a grown man, a well-armed warrior setting out to take revenge. But in those dreams of vengeance he never succeeded. He always woke before he could strike their enemies, staring up at the smoke hole in the longhouse roof.

  Then he had listened to the sounds of the others in their family compartments along either wall of the Wolf Clan longhouse. On the rack below him, his father—who’d returned unsuccessful from the attempt to catch the raiders—and his mother had slept almost as fitfully as he did. Only Okwaho’s little sister, snuggled in between them, had seemed to truly be resting.

  I will go back to sleep, he’d silently said to himself each time he woke. This time when I dream, Tawis and I will escape. And when I wake up in the morning he will be standing by my sleeping rack, tickling me. Or maybe pouring a dipper of water over my head.

  But each time the same thing happened. Tawis was captured as Okwaho ran. He would wake biting his lip, trying not to shout his lost friend’s name. Again and again and again it went on that way.

  Why must I be only a boy, he thought. Why can I not be a grown man? One who can do something meaningful!

  He reached one arm down to scoop up a handful of kernels of dried corn from the elm bark basket by his bed. It was the last of the corn saved from the harvest of the year before.

  “Corn,” he whispered, “can you help me? Bring me a song to take my thoughts to a better place?”

  Okwaho began to let kernels fall, one by one, from one hand into the other and back again. The whisper and rattle of one grain against another sounded like a voice. Like the rhythm of a song. So many things always made him think of songs—old ones and ones that wanted to enter his thoughts. Even now when anger was twisting in his head, the songs were still there waiting for him. Like the one coming to him now.

  He took a breath and began to sing.

  Corn, I thank you.

  Corn, I thank you.

  You and your two sist
ers

  Bring us life.

  And as he sang, a story came into his mind—the oldest story his people knew, the tale of how this earth came to be.

  Long ago, a woman fell from the sky. She brought with her seeds from the sky tree. The water creatures had prepared a place for her by putting soil onto the back of the Great Turtle as it floated on the surface of the ocean. She let those seeds fall into her tracks in the moist earth as she danced with small steps—as the women of the five Longhouse Nations dance to this day.

  Sky Woman had a daughter, the first human born on this earth. And when her daughter was grown, she married the west wind and gave birth to two sons. And that was when all the trouble began. For one of those boys was kind and generous. The other was angry and selfish and deceitful. They were called the Good Mind and Flint. The Good Mind was born in the normal way, but Flint thrust himself out through his mother’s side, killing her.

  The two of them began to struggle over who would control the world. The Good Mind made fruits and flowers. Flint made thorns and poisonous plants. The Good Mind made rivers that flowed gently. Flint made rapids and threw in big stones that would sink canoes. The Good Mind made all kinds of fish that were good to eat. Flint made monsters that hid underwater waiting to drag people in and eat them. So it went until finally the two of them wrestled. When the Good Mind won, Flint, the twisted-minded one, was banished.

  But the Twisted Mind is not totally gone.

  At times, Flint is able to influence our thoughts toward selfishness and anger. But the Good Mind is always there to guide us back toward peace and sharing.

  Okwaho sat up, still holding the kernels of corn in his hand. It was a good song and a good story that the corn had brought to him. For a moment, that moment as he was singing and seeing that story happen, the anger had almost left him. It was that way when he thought of peace.

  Only a few generations ago, according to his mother, the five sister nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Longhouse People, had lived together in peace. They had all been following the way of the Good Mind. But that was no longer true. Now, with the endless cycle of raid and counter-raid, of attack and revenge, the balance had tipped toward Flint. Men such as Atatarho, who no longer listened to the Good Mind, were in charge.

  Okwaho shook his head. Neither the song nor the story had really helped him at all.

  He pushed the elm bark basket of corn aside. It was the fourth morning since his escape from the Oneida raiding party. Sleep had not come easily. Whenever he did sleep, his dreams kept taking him back to the events of the day before.

  * * *

  • • •

  The longhouse was empty aside from him. Everyone else had gone about their daily chores. His parents had let him sleep. They had to have noticed his restlessness all through the night. But they had not disturbed him. What good would it have done?

  A pot of corn mush hung over the cooking fire in the center of the longhouse. He took the wooden spoon that hung by a rawhide string from his belt and dipped into the hot mush.

  “Thank you for this food,” he said. Then he blew on the spoonful of mush to cool it, before putting it into his mouth. It had been sweetened with maple sugar. Not only did it taste good, he realized how hungry he was. He took another, bigger spoonful and then another. He felt starved as a wolf in winter. But as he was filling his stomach, the thought of Tawis came back to him.

  It hit him like a blow to his head. Where was his friend now? Was he well or suffering? Was he eating or being starved by his captors? The corn mush no longer tasted as good to him. He licked his spoon clean, wiped it with a corn husk, and put it back onto his belt. He dipped one of the nearby gourds into the clay pot beaded with sweat that sat a long arm’s length from the fire. “Thank you,” he said. Then he washed down the last of his breakfast with the cool spring water.

  When he stepped outside, there were few of his fellow villagers to be seen. The sun was already two hands above the horizon. By now most of the women had gone down the hill to the fields, accompanied by well-armed men to guard them while they worked. Burnt Hair was standing watchfully by the village gate, and Okwaho’s father had stationed himself by the edge of the main path into the woods.

  Okwaho was relieved to see his father and Tawis’s uncle. He understood what that meant. If there was a raid planned on the Oneidas, they would have been the ones to lead it. Despite what had happened, they were not going off on a raid of their own to seek revenge.

  A little group of small children were playing the hoop game by the southern wall of the palisade around their town. But he didn’t see . . .

  A stone formed in his belly as Okwaho realized what he was doing. He was looking around for Tawis as he always did each day. Expecting his best friend—the only young person of his age who had ended up in their small community—to creep up and jump on him from behind to start one of their wrestling matches that often ended with neither being able to throw the other.

  Okwaho started walking toward the gate. He nodded at his father and then at Burnt Hair, but said nothing. He didn’t even speak the morning greeting—“I am glad to see you looking well.”

  His father, seeming to understand that words were not possible, or perhaps that silence might communicate more than words at a time such as this, also said nothing. He only nodded and squeezed his son’s shoulder gently as he walked through the gate. Okwaho went no farther than the edge of the woods, where he relieved himself and then turned to look back.

  To the side of their longhouse, his mother, Wolf Woman, was pounding corn in a mortar not far from the group of playing children. She lifted her chin, beckoning him toward her.

  Okwaho walked across the village center to sit next to her. Neither of them spoke. He leaned back against the stockade wall and listened. The drumbeat sound of the corn being pounded was soothing, like that of a song so old, it could no longer be translated into human speech. She stopped to pour out the finely ground corn from the mortar into a bowl. Okwaho poured more kernels of corn into the mortar and his mother began using the pestle again.

  When the last of the corn had been pounded, she wiped her hands on her dress and sat down next to him.

  “How did things come to be this way?” Okwaho asked.

  “It has happened before,” Wolf Woman replied.

  chapter five

  MESSENGERS

  Okwaho’s mother began the story called “The Twins.”

  “Long ago,” his mother said, “Teharonhia:wako, The one Who Grasps the Sky with Both Hands, the right-handed twin, the Good-Minded One, sent a messenger to give instructions to the first human beings. Hoh?”

  “Henh,” Okwaho replied, showing he was truly listening.

  “Those instructions were not hard. That first messenger explained that all we human beings needed to do was remember to always give thanks. To help us do this, we were taught the words to be spoken before all others. With those words, we could carefully greet and thank all parts of Creation before beginning any important task. Although many seem to have forgotten this—such as Atatarho—we must remember those words.”

  “Henh,” Okwaho said.

  Wolf Woman nodded and then began to speak those Thanksgiving words.

  “We greet and thank our Mother, the Earth, the one who gave birth to us and who cares for all life.

  “We greet and thank the waters, the rivers and streams, the lakes, and the water that flows through our own bodies.

  “We greet and thank the trees, especially the maple, who is the leader of all the trees and is the first to give us a harvest in the form of its sweet sap.

  “We greet and thank all of the plants that teach us and allow us to use their roots and stems, their leaves and flowers, as medicine.

  “We greet and thank the Three Sisters, those who sustain us by providing us with food, the Corn, the Beans, the Squash . . .”

 
* * *

  • • •

  His mother, her eyes raised as she spoke, continued through the list of all the gifts of life, acknowledging the animals, the birds, the winds, the Moon, the Sun, the Stars. Okwaho nodded again and again. It always calmed his insides, made his breath slow and even. His heart felt a little less burdened by care and anger as he heard the Thanksgiving words spoken.

  “Then,” Wolf Woman said, “we greet and thank all of the People, those we know, those we have not yet met. And we thank our Creator, who has brought all of this into being.”

  She took a long slow breath and turned her gaze to her son. “Okwaho, because I am only a human being, I may have forgotten some who should be thanked, so I ask you to think of them and add your own thanks.”

  “Henh,” Okwaho said.

  “It was good to do this, it is still good to this day,” Wolf Woman said. “Hoh?”

  “Henh.”

  “As I said at the end of those thanks, we humans are weak and forgetful. We are not like our wiser relatives, the animal people who always remember their place in Creation and their proper role. As a result, long ago, a time came when we humans began to forget those words to be spoken. The people back then no longer gave thanks. They began to quarrel and fight with each other. As so many of us are doing now.”

  Okwaho nodded. It was painfully true.

  His mother lifted her right hand toward the Sky World. “But The One Who Grasps the Sky with Both Hands saw this. So a second messenger was sent. This one brought us ceremonies that would remind us of our place in the world and that we were part of a great Creation.”