“Today we began the planting, but tonight we get to celebrate! I can hardly wait for all that food!” Kaiauk continued.
“I am looking forward to the dancing and drumming,” Ascopo said. “It makes the hard work easier to bear when I think about how much fun we have during the celebration.” He paused and smirked at Kaiauk, “And I know who you are looking forward to seeing, Kaiauk. Does Skyco know?”
I looked questioningly at Ascopo, but he just laughed as Kaiauk’s face turned bright red.
“Well, then, uh, let’s go get started!” he stuttered.
The sun was high in the sky as all the people of the village gathered together at the edge of the field. Ascopo, Kaiauk, and I joined Andacon and Osocan, who were standing together, as always. We each picked up one of the men’s tools, the shoulder blade of a deer attached to a long stick. Because the men hunted deer, only the men used the sticks with the deer bones, and this year that included us. We all felt rather proud of ourselves and shared conspiratorial smiles as we selected our special tools for the first time. We were nearly men!
I scraped out a clump of green grass by its roots and left it on the surface to dry out. My sister, with one of the pointed sticks that women use, was concentrating on the old stalks from last year, prying them up out of the ground. Since the ground was dry and the sun was hot, the weeds died quickly once we jerked them out by the roots. My back was already warm in the sun and a few droplets of sweat accumulated on my upper lip, where they tickled. After we worked through the whole field, we turned back and raked the dead plants into small piles.
After we finished the first field, all the villagers took a break together under the shade of trees to drink cool water that some of the women had thoughtfully hauled up from the river in a large macócqwer. Andacon complained about the heat, and my sister made a little snort of disbelief. We were all hot and thirsty. My stomach growled, making Cossine look curiously at me, but we did not eat anything, fasting instead until the evening’s celebration. I drank some more water to quiet my stomach. We would sow this first field with the initial planting of pagatowr, but two more fields for the later plantings and one field for the sunflowers remained. We had much yet to finish, and soon Tetepano led us back into the field.
While we worked steadily along in the second crop field, I heard the piercing whistle of a red-shouldered hawk, and Pooneno, who was close to Ascopo, stopped what he was doing to look around. The hawk was his spirit animal. I paused, too, and followed his gaze to the line of trees that bordered the river, but I could not see anything there. I kept looking, scanning from tree to tree, and then I saw the big bird move.
She perched high in a big oak tree, on a limb that gave her a good view across the whole field. Her chest and shoulders were reddish; her tail had alternating bands of white and black. She was bigger than the duck hawk, and broader of wing and tail. The duck hawk was slender and elegant, relying on her incredible speed to catch prey, but the red-shoulder exuded strength and raw power.
We were about halfway across the field, working toward her perch, with a cleared field behind us and a grassy, weedy strip still between the trees and us. I was surprised when she leaped off the limb, opened her wings, and glided across the field toward us. By now, most of the other men who were working the field had seen her too, and they all paused to watch as she swooped to the ground in the weedy section and came out with a mouse gripped in her claws. She screamed again in triumph, her whistle longer and more penetrating than before, and flew off out of sight to eat her catch.
When we finished the field, we gathered again for water under the shady trees. All the talk was about the hawk and her catch.
“Did you see how close she came to us?” Andacon asked the group in general. “I was on the edge nearest her, and I bet I could have touched her when she hit the ground to grab that mouse.” Andacon was so interested in hunting that he even evaluated the bird’s prowess.
“Yes, it was a close pass. I’ve never seen a hawk that was willing to come so close to us,” Ascopo volunteered. He was hoping to sound knowledgeable, I could tell, but Pooneno stepped in.
“She was hunting the edge of that field from which we flushed the mouse with our scraping and digging. I think that she knew to wait there while we flushed out animals for her. I could sense her watching and waiting; she was hunting.”
“You should know, Pooneno, since the red-shoulder is your spirit guide,” Kaiauk replied to him.
“She is a smart hawk, then. What is the chance she will come to the next field?” I asked aloud to no one in particular.
The hawk did not return to the third field, or at least I didn’t see her. I strained my eyes as I searched the trees, but she did not reappear. Several times I saw Ascopo, Andacon, or Osocan look up as well. I noticed many other small birds, however, because my eyes sought out movement. A towhee—or chúwhweeo—kicking and scratching in dry leaves on the ground startled me twice, attracting my attention with the flutter of brown leaves. His red eye, striking pattern of black, brown, and white colors, and his sharply accented call—“jor-ee!”—identified him.
A song sparrow sang melodiously from the weedy border of the field, causing me to stop and search for the source of the pretty song. He was perched at the tip of a blueberry shrub, which we left growing along the edge of the field because it produced berries in the summertime, his small chest puffed out so that the central, dark spot on it seemed twice as large as normal.
The striking red body of a redbird, a meesquouns, caught my eye as he flicked aside some grass to grab a cricket or other insect from the ground. Among such animated and entertaining creatures, we seemed to finish the third field in no time at all and were soon back at the resting place still talking about the hawk.
While we were chattering with each other, Pooneno suddenly took a quick breath and said, “Look! There she comes again!” He pointed to the tree from which the hawk had sprung to catch the mouse. I looked up just in time to see the hawk land in the tree. Once she settled in and stopped moving, she was difficult to see on her perch.
We boys ran to the fourth field with light steps, scratching a little more vigorously in the hope of scaring out another mouse for the hawk to catch. Even my sister managed to work up close to Ascopo, Kaiauk, and me, and she was poking around with her stick in likely mouse hiding-places rather than concentrating on prying the roots out of the ground. Sure enough, after working through about half of the field, forcing any animals in the grass ahead of us, we saw the hawk leap from her perch, pumping her wings this time as she headed toward us. Instead of darting directly to the ground as she had previously, she pulled up and hovered over the field for several wingbeats, furiously pumping her wings up and down, and then she suddenly dove to the ground. This time, she came up with a colorful snake that we called tesicqueo. The snake writhed wildly in her grip, but she had grabbed it behind the head, thereby preventing it from bending around to bite her.
“Look at that!” my sister said in awe as the hawk flew back to its perch and pecked the snake in the head as soon as it landed. The snake twitched and slowly contracted its coils as it lay draped over the limb, and my sister shivered in unease. Noticing her discomfort, Kaiauk stepped up close to her.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s dead, but its muscles still work for a while. I saw that once in a rattlesnake,” he added proudly. “It lunged at me even after I had killed it.”
Ascopo sniggered and said, “Well maybe you just didn’t do the job right, Kaiauk, and only injured the snake instead of killing it.”
Kaiauk turned sharply and stepped up threateningly toward his brother. “It was dead. I know it. You shut up about things you don’t know!” They stood facing each other, glaring, while my sister and I paused to watch.
“Get back to work, boys!” Tetszo called from nearby. “Save that energy for the weeds!”
I constantly checked to see what the hawk was doin
g even as I worked the fourth field, and I bet everyone else in that field did too. The hawk just stood beside the snake as it kept coiling and uncoiling, a little slower each time, until it finally hung limply over the limb. Then the hawk called out with her high shriek and another hawk—her mate—answered back as he came cruising over the village and fields. He landed beside her and immediately began tearing at the snake. I quit working and leaned on my stick to watch, but since the older men and some of the women were also watching the spectacle, I assumed it was okay to do the same. The female hawk must have been full of mouse, because she allowed her mate to eat the entire snake. Her mate was a little smaller than she, noticeable when they were side by side, so we knew that Pooneno was right when he called her female at first sight.
At last we moved to the final field, for sunflowers, and I delighted in nearing the end of the project. While thinking about the hawk and her hunt, ignoring my hunger was possible, but now that it was late afternoon, my belly was winning the fight with my mind. Ascopo looked rather pitiful as he rubbed his empty stomach. To make matters worse, we smelled the fire that some of the women were already tending. I could imagine the big pot boiling with succotash.
Sweaty and hot, I walked from the field to gather with everyone else at the edge of the river, where we washed the sweat and dirt from our tired bodies. Some of the old women started grumbling when I splashed water up into the face of Ascopo, who responded by jumping on my shoulders and dunking my head under water while he was howling and laughing. As he pushed me down under water, I gave in and was pushed all the way down near his feet, which I grabbed and jerked to tip him over. He came up sputtering and shaking water from his wet hair, and Kaiauk immediately dunked him back under again, laughing all the while. Osocan tried the same trick on his brother.
“How can you boys have so much energy after working all day?” I whirled around at my mother’s voice and leapt out of the river to embrace her.
“Mother!” I cried joyfully. “It has been a long time since I have talked with you. I missed you when I stopped by the other day, when Mamankanois told me you were assisting the birth of Cháppacor’s child. I have been busy in my training.”
“That is how it should be, my son.” My mother smiled at me as she held my shoulders and I saw her glance at my neck.
“The necklace is beautiful. Thank you for making it for me,” I said.
“It made me a little nervous to hold the teeth of a shark and know that you were so close to one, but I was proud to prepare such a strong talisman for you. You bear an important responsibility for our tribe, Skyco. Remember that one day you will be chief and you have much to learn before you become as wise as Menatonon.” She gave a slight push, directing me up the path to the village. “Come, walk with me, Skyco. Tonight we sit as families during the feasting. You can tell me what you have been learning.” I waved goodbye to the other boys, still dunking each other in the river.
Mother stretched her arm out straight from her body and said, “Look how much you have grown since you left my wigwam. Your head is above my shoulder height now.” She dropped her arm and glanced down. “Your new loincloth looks very nice on you, as befits a young chief.”
I grinned at her, pleased that she noticed my height, which I hoped was continuing to increase, and said, “I think it looks very fine, too, the skin from my first deer. You made a beautiful cloth from it. Thank you again.”
When we reached the village, the drummers were already beating drums with a regular, easy rhythm. Mother and I walked up to the common pot and dipped out the aromatic succotash into smaller pottery bowls. We took our places next to chief Menatonon as his oldest sister and his heir. We sat a little behind him and on each side. Next to my mother, their sister Qvunziuck, and her young children, who are my cousins, gathered. We all clustered around Menatonon. Other villagers seated themselves in the common area, those with some matrimonial ties to our family closest to us, and those without connections farthest away. Even though Roncommock is a favored friend of Menatonon, an important shaman, and my teacher, he was not related to us so he sat at some distance with the rest of his family.
I ate the food from the bowl with my fingers, hungrily licking them clean and then wiping them on my loincloth. My mother and Menatonon were deep in conversation and I was on my second bowl when my sister finally showed up.
“Where have you been?” I asked her. “What took so long? You were with us at the field but then you disappeared.”
Mamankanois leaned over and whispered, “Mother left me with instructions to gather a root she needed and I couldn’t find it before we were called to planting. I knew I couldn’t harvest any other plants once the ceremony started tonight, so I went out to search again.”
“So did you get it?” I whispered to her.
“Yes. I finally found it.”
“Good thing you did. You know how Mother always insists that we finish our tasks.”
“You don’t have any idea! Since I started my training with her, she has been as tough as a black locust stump. I can’t do anything well enough to please her. I was dead tired after planting, but I dared not disappoint her.”
“So that’s why we are whispering.” She didn’t want our mother to overhear. “What else have you been doing?” But my sister did not have time to answer.
Menatonon stood up and the buzz of voices quieted, as did the beating drums. He was splendidly outfitted. The tail of a cougar, an animal he had killed as a young man and now wore as a talisman, dangled from his belt. He stripped off his cloak so that we could see the extensive tattoos on his chest, arms, and legs. Three necklaces looped around his neck, each strung with the precious, purple, wampum disks, some of which came from my trip to the banks. He wore a single gorget of copper, which covered his heart. A bracelet of pearls decorated his right wrist. On his left wrist, he wore a leather wrist guard sewn with an intricate design, and he held a fine longbow—Memeo’s best work—even though he no longer shot it. The right side of his head was freshly shaven and the left side was decorated with the feathers of several birds, among them the bald eagle, whose great white tail feathers only a chief could wear. From his ears were suspended the largest single pearls our tribe had ever collected. A strand of minsal, white beads of bone, rested on his head at the level of his forehead.
“Bring forth the seeds,” he commanded, and my mother, who had unobtrusively gone to her wigwam to fetch them, stood up with several woven baskets, each full of a different type of seed. I looked around, astonished. How did she get past me so quickly? She always seemed to anticipate events before they occurred. She wore her necklaces of wampum and a strand of minsal on her head to indicate her status as head woman. Some of the shells I gave her decorated her loincloth, and they tinkled together as she walked.
Roncommock moved from his place among the throng, meeting my mother as she joined him at the central fire, directly in front of Menatonon. He wore his special cloak of rabbit skins and carried a bundle of dried leaves, some of which I recognized as those of our crop plants. He cast a little uppówoc from the pouch at his waist onto the fire, then picked up a seed from each basket and held them in his hand.
“We sacrifice these seeds in the sacred fire and offer our thanks to their tribes. We hope that they will grow and feed us for the coming year. We will do our best to protect them from harm, to care for the plants that will provide the seeds for the next season. As they are given to us, we give back to them.” As he cast each seed into the fire, he called out their names and offered thanks.
“Thank you, pagatowr, master of all.”
“Thank you, okindgier, wickonzówr, macócqwer, (beans, peas, squash, pumpkins, gourds) and sunflowers.”
As he cast in the last seed, rapid, rhythmic drumbeats restarted, resounding throughout the village. At once, I leapt up with the other boys to join the men at the dancing circle, and the best dancers among the men were alrea
dy whooping and jumping next to one of the seven carved poles evenly spaced around the circumference of the circle. Each pole had a face that represented one of the most important spirits. Tonight, the most important spirits are those of our crops, and our dancing embraced, celebrated, and honored them.
Chaham and Kaiauk already occupied places next to a spirit pole. As they stomped their feet and hopped up and down along with the other dancers, each shook a small macócqwer rattle full of pebbles tied to a stick. Kaiauk danced more dramatically than any of the other men, rhythmically pounding his feet as he whooped and jumped. He was really showing off. Chaham, however, only danced briefly before he laid down his rattle, and I quickly grabbed it and took his place in the dance. As I started dancing, I saw my sister pick up the exhausted Kaiauk’s relinquished rattle, and the way they passed it from hand to hand caught my attention, but only for a moment.
My mind and body soon resonated with the thumping drums, pounding footfalls, and crackling of the fire, until I was swept into them all. As I danced, lost in this strange unification, my legs weakened as my spirit soared. How long I danced was impossible to judge, but my body asserted itself as my tired legs finally gave way.
Sweat was pouring off me and I was very thirsty. As I stood by the macócqwers of water, drinking my fill, I looked back toward the dancing circle to see dust from the dancers swirling in the air, their dark forms backlit by the fire. Chaham, who was with me at the water, said, “It is a good dancing night when the dust rises in the air from all the pounding feet and the soil around the dancing circle is packed smooth as the clay patted by our potters,” and I had to agree.
It was completely dark when the drummers beat a final flourish, announcing the end of the dance. The moon was bright and full, the planting moon, and it was easy to see as we walked back to our wigwams even though our eyes were accustomed to the firelight.
Early the next morning, the whole village turned out again at the crop fields. Even though I arrived along with the other villagers before the sun arose, Roncommock was already there. I had not heard him leave the wigwam. He carried a clay pot that contained some embers from the sacred fire.
Spirit Quest Page 18
