Orenda - Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

As Patty Sullivan fell into the dreamless oblivion of total exhaustion, and Paul Neiderhaus sipped pensively at his night cap, Pierre Twofeathers, shivering in the icy blasts from the North, entered his frail shanty on the river bank. It was not much warmer inside.

With the same charred stick he had stirred the fire with the night before, he now probed the pile of gray ashes. Underneath, he finally found a few faintly glowing embers. Carefully, he blew on them, causing them to glow a cherry red. He added tufts of dried grass, and blew softly across them until they burst into smokey flame. Then, he placed tiny twigs, tee-pee like, over the smoldering grass. As they caught fire, he began adding ever larger pieces of wood until he had a fire large enough to begin heating at least this corner of his shack.

Twofeathers knew he should cook something to eat, but he was simply too tired. His aging muscles burned from the exertion of cutting thick saplings all day long. He rummaged through the one-room cabin, and found a handfull of current berries he had picked the month before. He ate them. together with the remains of a half-eaten chocolate bar he found in his rucksack. Even dry, the berries had a tartness about them. Their tangy flavor made him long for a strip of dried Salmon. He knew the Algonquian, snug in their cabins this winter night, would be feasting on the rich red flesh of the large fish. Pierre felt homesick.

The few berries and bit of chocolate in his stomach, however, gave him a sense of new energy, and he put a few more sticks of wood onto his smoky fire. He sat down before it, cross-legged, and began to char the point of the hickory spear he had cut. He would harden the point, little by little, until it would pierce even the toughest hide.

Wearily, he began to recall the peyote-induced revelation from the spirits he had received the night before. He remembered with pleasure the warmth and euphoric sense of security the peyote and the forest sounds had blanketed him with. He had floated in the grip of the sensations for what seemed like hours before the spirits had started to become real for him.

It was as if the fire was a window, the flames spreading to the sides and forming a frame for the wavering scenes he saw. He watched, in silent awe, the comings and goings of the tangible looking apparitions. If they noticed his presence among them, they made no outward sign. They seemed unconcerned that a being from another world, another dimension, was observing them.

Then, Tecumseh, Unifier of the Iroquois Nation, had come striding across the grasslands of the spirit world toward him. He had sat directly across the fire from Pierre, and Pierre felt that if he could lean across the fire without burning himself, he could actually touch the spirit of the great Shawnee leader. Pierre waited for the spirit to speak to him.

"Although I am Shawnee, I speak for the Tuscazoarans, who have no chief." Tecumseh said, but there were no actual sounds.

Pierre remained silent.

"This is the price your people have had to pay for not heeding our call to fight the white men. . .for not driving him from our lands."

Pierre nodded dumbly.

"Your people are in pain. They cannot find peace as long as their chief keeps the spirit world in turmoil. You have been called to perform a great task. You are the only warrior alive who can perform it, for you are the last Tuscazoaran." He paused, then raised the volume of his voice. "If you fail, the Tuscazoarans are condemned to writhe forever in the winter agony of Orenda's making."

Pierre hesitantly asked what the task was. He had been given piece-meal instructions, but did not yet understand what the spirit expected him to accomplish.

Tecumseh was joined at the fire by the form of his twin brother, Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet. Pierre knew of the magical powers of this magnificent visage. He had foretold the future of the American Indian, and his brother, Tecumseh, had tried to forestall the inevitability of that fate. But the prophecy of Tenskwatawa had been accurate, and Tecumseh's long fight to no avail.

It was said that Tenskwatawa had gained his ability to see the future by traveling to the sacred island of the Manitou. Pierre knew, as did all the Northeastern Indians, of the sacred place called Manitoulin, far to the north in the land of the Huron. It was the birthplace of all the spirit-gods, and the home of the Manitou; the most fearsome of them all.

The Prophet had ordered Pierre to construct a stockade. He said that it must be a cage strong enough to hold a bear, and designed so that an animal with the intelligence of a man could not easily escape from it. He instructed Pierre on the number and thicknesses of saplings to cut, and how to bind them together with vines.

Pierre had objected to the task, fearing that he was too old and his body too feeble for such a tremendous undertaking. "Why did you not call me twenty years ago?" He asked the spirit.

"You were called, but you did not come until this season."

Pierre meditated silently on the words. He cast his mind backwards, and realized that the Prophet spoke the truth. Many times during the past forty years, especially during the Fall, he had felt strange yearnings. Urges which he had not understood, and had drowned them in white man's whiskey and the arms of Algonquian whores. He felt shame at his lack of comprehension.

Tenskwatawa then told him the story of the Pipestone, to give him courage. Twofeathers had learned from his great-grandfather, the last of his line to possess one, that the pipestone was the most sacred symbol of his people. To earn the sliver of dull red stone, engraved with the warrior’s totem, was both a brave’s emblem of manhood and status. There was no object more important to a Tuscazoaran warrior.

The Prophet told him of the great price paid by his people for the little rectangles of red stone which came from the great desert, land of the Zuni, over a thousand miles to the West. Twofeathers remembered the worn, reddish shard his great-grandfather had clutched to his breast when he was buried in the style and the land of the Algonquian. His great-grandfather's totem had been the rising sun, and where it was engraved into the pipestone, markedly contrasted with the smooth, worn texture of the rest of the badge.

Tenskwatawa reiterated to him the story of how a young Tuscazoaran boy passed into manhood, and earned his pipestone. All night long, the young man would hang from the branches of a tree. Thongs of rawhide slipped through the skin, and under the muscles of his chest, suspended the young warrior high above a ceremonial fire. His ordeal would be watched by his father and other warriors. If no whimper or cry escaped his lips before the sun broke over the campsite, the boy would be cut down, and allowed to rest all that day.

That night, the Blacksnake Ceremony would take place, and the youthful warrior would be given his pipestone. The pipestone would be smooth, for the warrior would not know his totem until the spirits revealed it to him at the end of the ceremony. After hours of drinking the weak beer brewed by the squaws, the dancing would begin; and the new warrior must dance holding a black snake stretched between his arms, held over his head. As the moon rose full, the boy would be brought before the shaman, who, sitting cross-legged before the ceremonial fire, held a human skull in his hands.

The drums would fall silent, and all would gather about the young man. When the drums began again, a slowly throbbing pound, the youngster would stretch the snake tautly between his outstretched hands, and bite it in half. Then, arms held high, so that all could see the writhing, twisting ends of the dying serpent curling about his wrists, he proclaimed his manhood.

The older warriors would then force the initiate to his hands and knees, and jostle him forward, towards the unmoving shaman. When he was positioned directly across the fire, the shaman would raise the skull to the top of the flames, and begin to chant, calling the spirits to attend, and name the new warrior's totem. He would then hold the skull above the leaping flames, and the boy's face would be pressed against it, his eyeballs staring into the empty sockets of the skull. Within the licking flames inside the skull, the youngster would see his totem. The sign of it would be engraved on his pipestone, and would serve as his main protector for the rest of his life.

A Tuscazoaran brave could have up to four totems, each denoting a higher level of achievement. The second level could be earned by successfully hunting and killing an adult bear or a cougar. The totem for this level of pipestone would be engraved below the first, and would either be the head of the bear or the cougar. Many braves never achieved this status, although many tried, some dying in the attempt.

The third level of pipestone could be earned only in warfare. There were three types of totem to be engraved on this level. Two were of the weapons used in battle, tomahawk or knife. Bows and arrows or spears were used from far too great a distance to measure a brave's courage. The third, and most impressive, was the coup stick, and could be achieved only by counting coup on an armed enemy.

Tenskwatawa's sonorous voice lulled Twofeathers into a fantasy, in which he saw himself charging down upon an enemy - a white man with a rifle in his hands - and at just the right moment for Pierre to deliver the death blow, he deftly touched the white man's forehead with his feathered coup stick, and then retreated, whooping in triumph. He felt, momentarily, the power of the coup stick totem coursing through his being.

The Prophet interrupted his reverie by telling him of the fourth level of pipestone, which had been won only twice in the long history of the Tuscazoaran people. Both times it had been by a great chief, who had done something so remarkable as to literally save the tribe from extinction.

"Orenda, the last chief of the Tuscazoarans, could have been such a leader," Tenskwatawa said. "If he had led his people away from the white men to a safe, new homeland, or if he had joined the Iroquois and killed the white devils while they were still few in number. He could have worn the fourth level pipestone." Tenskwatawa's voice seemed to roll like thunder. "Instead, he was a fool, and delivered his people to the whites for slaughter. Now, they want him back!" Tenskwatawa paused, letting Twofeathers assimilate the thoughts. "Only you can deliver him up to them, so that they might complete their revenge, and find the peace and happiness that is rightfully theirs in the spirit world."

"I have seen the Tuscazoarans in the spirit world, and they do not weep." Pierre replied.

"You have not seen them when Orenda rides the Manitou!"

Tenskwatawa said. "That is when they writhe in the agony of Orenda's vengeful bloodlust." With those words, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa stood and left the fire. As they disappeared into the tall grass of their world, Pierre's window closed, and he sat staring into his dying fire, taking little warmth from it.

He wept because he had never had the chance to earn a pipestone and pass into manhood, and knew that because of this, his ancestors considered him something less than a squaw.

Tenskwatawa came back into the fire, alone, and told him to cease weeping like an old woman. He realized that Pierre was near the end of his years, and the task arduous; but there was no one else left to do it. He stood over the fire, and pointed a muscular arm at Pierre.

"Only you can put the crazed sprit of Orenda to rest. He still roams the world of the living, but he is not alive. He tries to atone for the mistakes he made as chief, and in doing so, makes the same error over and over again. You must become a warrior and do this thing!"

Pierre pointed to his chest, devoid of the scars of manhood, with both hands, eloquently pointing out to the Prophet that he was not a warrior. No pipestone dangled from his medicine bag, and he had no totem to protect him from evil and guide his steps.

"You shall have your pipestone when you enter the spirit world, if you accomplish this task." Tenskwatawa said softly, and started to turn from Pierre again, then turned back, and gazed down on the old man. In a softer voice, he said, "I give you my totem. The most powerful in all the world. . .the Manitou." He then silently disappeared.

Pierre rocked slowly back and forth in front of his fire. The berries and bit of chocolate he had consumed earlier were long gone from his stomach, and it growled in protest. He shivered when icy tendrils wrapped themselves around his spine, reminding him of his increasing age. He chewed no peyote this night, for he would not visit the spirit world until construction of the cage was complete; so the cold and hunger were not dulled.

He wept quietly, and was ashamed of the tears running down his parched and wrinkled cheeks. They dripped off his jutting chin, and fell to the ground, where they were absorbed into it, mingling with the tears of five thousand years of his people. He wept for the spirit of Orenda, wandering forever alone the howling winter winds, hated by his own people. He wept for his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his own father, their spirits doomed to walk eternally among those of the Algonquian. He wept for himself, for that which had been, that which could have been; but would never be again. But, most of all, he wept for his brutally annihilated people, now lost to the world, and the world lost to them; of which he was the very last.