by H L Grandin
While Nine Moons was addressing Silver Cloud, many of the People had awakened to the news of the meeting in the council lodge, and rushed to take part in the discussion. A large crowd had gathered behind him to listen to his words. A woman yelled out, “Nine Moons is right. We cannot allow this to happen to our daughter!”
A brave chimed in from the back of the lodge, “We will not let them take her. We will fight!” At this, the braves raised their tomahawks and bows, and let out with war cries that shattered the silence of the morning.
Silver Cloud rose to face the crowd. With an expression of anguish contorting his weathered face, he addressed the crowd. “Eh ta tee chi tu no eh alo. Be-chi. E yo (We) et a (have) lish a lo come from a council called by Chief Yellow Robe of the Shawnee nation. He and his people have lost six young braves, two of them his own sons, they say at the hands of our brother and son Tyoga Weathersby.”
He paused to carefully compose the next few lines of his address to his people. “That our brother is of the spirit world there can be no question. His power is real. The spirit of Wahaya-wacon lives within him. He possesses the courage and strength of Wahaya, but also the wisdom of the wild that guides the power he owns. My son, Tyoga, vows to me that he has never taken the life of any man. My son has always spoken the truth. His words are true. I believe them. But I also believe that the Shawnee braves were killed by Wahaya-Wacon. Where my son Tyoga ends, and the spirit dog Wahaya begins, I cannot say.”
As Silver Cloud spoke, the people continued to pour into the council lodge. When he had finished speaking, the room was filled to capacity and the crowd was spilling out onto the ceremonial grounds outside of the lodge.
Silently, Prairie Day had made her way to where True Moon was holding Sunlei in her arms. She knelt down next to Sunlei’s mother, put her arms around her and held her while she rocked her daughter. She rested her cheek on top of True Moon’s head. With the rest of the crowd, they had listened to Silver Cloud’s words in respectful silence. They waited quietly for him to resume.
Pockets of murmuring between the braves in the room caused Tyoga and Tes Qua to turn around and scan the crowd. The tone of the hushed whispers conveyed an anxious restlessness seeking rancor rather than resolution.
Silver Cloud continued, “Chief Yellow Robe has demanded that his son, Seven Arrows, be joined with Nine Moon’s daughter Sunlei Awi. It is his wish that together they replace the six lives that have been taken from the Shawnee by Wahaya-Wacon. In seven moons, the Shawnee will arrive to take her.”
“When they arrive we will kill them! We will kill them all!” a voice rang out. Once again a loud chorus of war whoops, punctuated with fists thrown in the air and tomahawks raised by muscled arms, erupted through the crowd.
Silver Cloud raised his hand to quiet them. “My People. We must not interfere. We must not allow any harm to come to Seven Arrows and his men when they come to take Sunlei. For many years, we have lived in peace with our Shawnee neighbors. The unions made between our peoples have allowed it to be so. Cherokee and Shawnee blood runs in the veins of our children, and because of this we will not risk a war.”
Chief Silver Cloud paused to allow this edict to be understood by all. “Yellow Robe is a wise and powerful Chief of the Shawnee. Once before a renegade band of dog soldiers defied their chief’s orders and wiped out a peaceful village of unprotected Cherokee. If the Ani-Unwiya do not pay what has been demanded, I do not know if Yellow Robe is strong enough to stop them from making war. If Seven Arrows and his party do not return to South Fork with Sunlei, the Shawnee may rise up against the will of their chief. If they come, they will butcher our men and torture our sons. Our women, our wives, they will rape and enslave. The Shawnee will leave no footprint of a single Ani-Unwiya.”
A hush fell over the crowd as if the wind had been knocked out of every brave in the room.
The good of the many was the credo by which the Native Americans lived their lives. Self-sacrifice was an unquestioned obligation that was given freely by members of any tribe. In battle, in a dangerous hunt, or in matters of state, the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of territory, honor, freedom, or peace was an expectation rather than a duty. The imperative was to continue, to persevere, and to survive. If one must be given up so that the destiny of the many is fulfilled, then it must be so. Native Americans gave of themselves freely so that others might live.
Giving up Sunlei would not be an act to which the People would freely bow.
Sunlei had grown into so much more than merely one of the People. She was “the” one of the People. While it was true that her physical beauty was spell binding, and that her strength of character and personal charm were unequaled in the land, those attributes played only minor roles in her value to the Ani-Unwiya people.
Sunlei Awi (Morning Deer) was their hope for a future rooted in the respect and reverence for their past. It was she who was destined to fulfill the imperative to continue, to persevere, to survive.
From the northern snowy hollows of the Caughnimaw Valley to the humid southern swamps of Okeefenokee, the entire Cherokee nation had placed their hopes for bridging the growing chasm between the colliding worlds of the white man and the Native Americans upon her delicate frame. Enough white blood coursed through her veins to chisel her facial features and sculpt her lean body into a package that would one day be accepted in the white man’s world. If not as an equal, then certainly as an acceptable partner in civil discourse.
Her command of the English language and a hoped-for marriage to Tyoga Weathersby would make her a formidable presence in managing the white avalanche that was poised to bury the Appalachian frontier.
To surrender her to the Shawnee was to abandon their hope for the future.
Stepping from the crowd, Calling Owl, a strong and respected warrior, said, “Tyoga Weathersby, Yellow Robe believes that you and the spirit wolf are one and the same. It is of no matter to the People if this is true. What matters is that Sunlei Awi will be taken from us because of what Wahaya-Wacon has done. Because of the spirit dog, you may never feel her touch again in the night. Her voice you will hear no more. Wahaya-Wacon has not only broken your heart, but the heart of the People as well. What have you to say about your spirit guide now?”
Tyoga rose and faced the crowd. Before he could begin to speak, Tes Qua rose to stand by his side.
“E ya a ho, Wahaya-Wacon eh a to wa e alo,” Tyoga said. “That Wahaya-Wacon is my spirit guide is not a choice that I have made. His spirit has chosen me. Why this has happened, I cannot say. I only know that it is true. He tested me on that night on the ridge because he knew that I, like the Weathersbys before me—Joshia, Joseph, and Thomas, my father—had been awakened to the ways of the natural world by a promise spoken to me by our earth mother. She has revealed her secrets to me in ways that others cannot understand. The rising of the sun speaks to me not in words but in textures, colors, and hues. The rivers and streams do not reveal themselves to me as water coursing to the bay, but as whispers carried on the wind that speak of abundance and want. The pine trees swaying in the mountain breeze disclose their courage and strength in terms of time, generations, and fleeting chance.”
His meager attempt to make the crowd understand having been for naught, Tyoga stopped and bowed his head. The promise spoke to him in a language understood only by those who had been awakened to its presence. While they heard his words in Tsalagi, he may as well have been speaking in Cheyenne. “I do not expect you, my brothers and sisters, to understand these things. I only wish that you know them to be true. The spirit of Wahaya found a willing soul when he chose mine to share. He lives in me and has shown me the ways of mother earth even beyond the revelations of the promise. Now, his deeds—or mine—have caused us to lose Sunlei forever.”
At hearing these words, Prairie Day stood up at the far end of the lodge. She looked at Tyoga not with the hurt eyes of an angry, jealous woman; but with eyes filled with compassion and heart wrenching pain. More th
an anyone, she understood his words. It would take great courage for him to carry on.
Wanting him to see that she was there, she stood proud and strong.
He did.
As the crowd listened to Tyoga’s words, they understood his acceptance of Yellow Robe’s demand as the only prudent course. As much as they would have stood by him had he called them to arms to protect Sunlei, they knew that he would not risk their lives and the lives of the entire Ani-Unwiya clan for the sake of his own happiness. Their understanding made them no less angry. The restlessness of the crowd grew in intensity. The People abandoned the hushed tones of their private conversations.
“You ask us to stand quietly and surrender Sunlei to the Shawnee dogs?” a brave screamed from the back of the lodge.
“How can you allow her to be taken by Seven Arrows without a fight?” a female voice chimed in.
Another cried out, “Are you an Ani-Unwiya warrior or a scared woman? Call on us to fight and we will stand by your side.” With bows and tomahawks raised high into the air, the crowd again erupted into a chorus of war cries, screeches, and screams.
Sunlei had been lying in her mother’s arm in an exhausted trance that mercifully dulled her senses to the horror that awaited her as a Shawnee squaw. The gentle touch of her mother’s loving hands as she stroked her thick black hair and the sound of her soothing voice in her ear had lulled Sunlei into brief periods of sleep. Hearing her fate the evening before at the council in South Fork, and walking through the night to return home had been too much for her. She was strong and brave, but still a young woman not yet hardened by the unexpected trials of life on the frontier.
The braves’ war cries shook her awake. Caught in the boundary between sleep and consciousness, it took several seconds for Sunlei to sort the imagined from the real. As her eyes cleared, she slowly lifted her head from her mother’s lap. Gently peeling away the fold of her mother’s arms, she rose to her feet.
The crowd hushed when they saw her stand.
Straightening her tunic, she righted her shoulders and walked through the crowd straight toward Tyoga. Her measured, deliberate steps were spaced to keep her on her feet while her mind raced with the intoxication of exhaustion and disbelief. While her focus was on Tyoga’s eyes, she saw—yet did not see—her childhood friends embracing each other with tear-stained faces and trembling hands; her aunts and uncles clutching each other; and Lone Dove, Morning Sky, and Walking Bird holding each other. As she walked by them, they reached out to her and called her name. She heard, but did not hear. When she got to the front of the crowd, she turned and announced in a voice quivering with emotion, “Seven Arrows will come to Tuckareegee in seven moons. When he comes, I will go with him in peace.”
Some of the women in the crowd began to cry, and others called out, “No! We will not let you go!”
Turning to face Tyoga who was standing at her side, she took his hands in hers. Looking up into his tear-filled eyes, she said, “Tyoga will never ask you to risk your lives to secure his happiness, nor to ensure mine. While we could easily defeat Seven Arrows and a small band of Shawnee Braves, it would be a battle that would only buy time. The South Fork Shawnee will come with all of their warriors to wipe us out. I beg you, do not ask Tyoga to carry the deaths of his brothers with him for the rest of his life. Do not ask him to suffer the nightmare screams of our children as they are butchered by the Shawnee.”
Sunlei stopped to hang her head as she shook with the effort to contain her sorrow. She looked back up at his face, which was now streaming with tears, and said for all to hear, “I do not ask this of him. Even if I did, he would refuse.”
A body wrenching sob contorted her tiny frame so that she was barely able to speak her final words. Her knees grew weak and she drew herself closer to Tyoga, who supported her more earnestly. Gathering herself, she turned to the crowd and said in a voice strangled by emotion, “He is Wahaya-Wacon. He is filled with the wisdom to know what must be done, and with the courage to see it through. His spirit will give him the strength to carry on.”
Tyoga pulled Sunlei to him as her body convulsed in heart-breaking resignation of the horror that was to come. They stood for a long moment entwined in each other’s embrace. With monumental effort, she stepped away from his embrace, turned to the crowd, and said, “I am but one soul, and I will go with Seven Arrows of my own free will. I do this so that my People will live in peace.”
The tears streaming down Sunlei’s and Tyoga’s faces spread through the gathered crowd. The women hugged each other while they wept in disbelief at what was to come to pass. When the eyes of the braves began to fill, they turned to exit the lodge so that their tears would not be seen.
“Wait, my brothers,” Tyoga cried out before many could leave the lodge. “Hear me. When Sunlei is taken from Tuckareegee, my heart will be torn from this place. A man cannot live without his heart. I cannot bear to stay here without Sunlei by my side. I cannot bear to stay among you as the cause of your grief. I will leave my Ani-Unwiya family, and find my own way.”
No one uttered a sound. No one cried out, “Stay.”
In the back of the lodge, Prairie Day wiped her eyes, clenched her fists, and walked out alone into the dawn.
Chapter 27
A Reckoning
The entire village spent the next several days helping Sunlei’s family prepare for her departure. They moved through the alleys of Tuckareegee as if in a trance. Silence filled the usually vibrant town with an eery pall that would not abate.
Gifts flooded the lodge of Nine Moons and True Moon while families gathered to say their private goodbyes to Sunlei. Tes Qua stayed with Sunlei and his parents while they were receiving visitors, acknowledging their gifts, and embracing well wishers in long painful partings filled with tears.
To make the parting all the more difficult, Seven Arrows and a band of Shawnee braves arrived three days ahead of schedule and camped only about a half-mile to the south of the Cherokee village. It was a calculated taunt designed to provoke the grieving citizens of Tuckareegee.
Since announcing his impending departure at the meeting in the council lodge, Tyoga had made himself scarce. His rebuke at not being encouraged to stay among the People after Sunlei’s departure was a painful reminder that he was indeed a brother to the Ani-Unwiya, but not a son. Although he had lived among the People all of his life and was accepted as a member of the tribe, no Cherokee blood ran through his veins. His color, build, and cultural heritage were barriers too conspicuous to be erased by ceremony or time. He had made camp on an overlook from which he could see Sunlei’s lodge. The People could see his campfire burning brightly in the night sky.
Alone in the wilderness, with Wahaya by his side, he thought of the journey that had brought him to this place and time.
He recalled that day with his papa so long ago when he stood on Carter’s Rock on a chilly summer morn and he saw the beams of sunlight that exploded from the peaks to the east to fuse with his soul and lift him from the confines of time and place.
The wonder of suddenly knowing.
That precious moment released him from the burden of questioning why and filled him with the intuitive truth that the answer made no difference at all. The knowing freed him from the imprisonment of doubt, uncertainty, and fear. The liberating wisdom permitted unfettered action and uncompromised certainty.
Why have I been chosen to receive the promise?
Events in his life had unfolded so that the distinction between gift and curse had been more than marginally blurred.
What sense does it make for my journey to unfold so that the woman I love should be taken away from me by an adversary whose life has inexplicably intersected with mine in such devastating ways?
His faint smile revealed the awareness that he had caught himself asking “why?” He chuckled and whispered out loud, “The answer makes no difference at all.”
He remembered the horrific night on the escarpment when he very nearly died saving the l
ife of his brother Tes Qua Ta Wa. He shivered when he looked upon the mighty beast lying so docilely at his side and recalled the moment that the gift was given to him on that fateful night. He understood that he had been chosen to receive the power from Wahaya-Wacon, but he struggled still to understand the hand that had guided the melding of their souls. He reached out and gently touched the wolf’s left shoulder.
The wolf picked his majestic head up off of his enormous forepaws and turned to reassuringly gaze into Tyoga.
Tyoga remembered growing up wild and free with the Ani-Unwiya and running naked through the woods with Sunlei and Tes Qua, White Wolf, and Four Bears. They had all grown into young adults. The joys and dreams of childhood had been sobered with age and tempered by experience.
The loss of loved ones. Hearts broken as puppy love crushes yield to the caprice of emotions as unpredictable as the flight of a feather in the wind.
That moment when Sunlei floated so lightly in his arms in the swimming hole was the first time that he noticed that she was leaving behind those things of childhood and accepting nature’s call to focus on those inescapable demands that herald the advent of womanhood. The eyes reflecting his own were that of a woman. He recalled the loss of his tomboy friend. That brief exchange of a knowing glance changed their relationship forever.
He thought about Prairie Day. Her eyes reflected a part of him that he did not see in Sunlei’s eyes. She radiated an unyielding confidence in the rightness of his words and deeds; like an adoring mother reassuring a reticent child, her gaze unerringly filled him with the confidence he needed to succeed, conquer, and command. She was a remarkably strong woman whose maturity anchored him in ways that Sunlei could not. That she loved him was beyond question.
