Authors: L. A. Meyer
We have been going along this trail for several hours now, at a half-walk, half-lope pace. They are certainly not making any allowances for me, that's for sure. I've got on my serving-girl gear, the skirt knotted at the side for ease of movement, and I'm able to keep up, but just barely, so I'm both startled and grateful when an Indian warrior appears on the trail in front of us. It seems that he is a sentry, guarding this particular path into his village, and it also appears that Chee-a-quat and Lightfoot and he know one another very well, as there is much talk and laughter among the three of them.
I hardly get a glance, let alone an introduction, but I do get to put down the sack of trade goods I've brought along and to catch my breath. Crow Jane had lent me an Indian shawl to put over my head so I wouldn't be quite so noticeable with my light hair when we got to the encampment, and I put it on now, as we are surely getting close.
Presently we all four start up again, and within several hundred yards, we can see the village, or town reallyâthere are about fifty tepees grouped together on the banks of a
small river. There seems to be great excitement among the people of the town.
"What's going on?" I ask quietly of Lightfoot, who has fallen back next to me as we enter the village.
"Chiefs of the Five Nations gatherin' to talk. The Creek and Cherokee here now. The rest soon. Tecumseh comes tomorrow."
Hmmm ... Big doings. Best keep alert. If these Indians do decide to get together and go on the warpath, it could bode ill for the
Belle.
"Me and Chee-a-quat gonna go see our father now. I'll put you with the girls. You behave now, y'hear?" he warns.
I nod.
Of course I'll behave myself. Don't I always?
"Your father?" I ask, as we get deeper and deeper into the town. All along there are calls of welcome and greeting. Lots of folks think Indians are always solemn and reserved, but that's only when they're in the company of strangers. When they're with their own, they laugh and cavort as much as any people, which is what they're doing now. I am starting to draw some attention from the younger members of the tribe, I notice.
"When I was a young'un, I ran away from home, and my father Tak-a-lay-to took me in and made me his son. Chee-a-quat is my brother. I am Shawnee," he says, with a good deal of pride.
Ah. Well, that explains a lot,
I'm thinking. We come up on a group of girls, mostly my age as far as I can tell. They are dressed in very handsome buckskin shirts and skirts that come to their knees, and they are wearing moccasin leggings that come up to mid calf. Their clothes are decorated with much beading and quillwork and are very handsomeâit must be their good clothes that they have on for the occasion of this grand powwow. Lightfoot speaks to them in Shawnee, and one of them, a girl only slightly taller than I and totally without expression, comes forward and takes my hand to lead me off, to what, I don't know. The other girls follow silently.
I am led around the back of a group of tepees, down a path, and to a small meadow next to the river. They stand in a group apart and regard me, saying nothing.
Well, we can't keep this up forever, can we? And I've found that nothing breaks the ice like a good tune, so I whip my pennywhistle from my sleeve to play "Poll Ha'penny," and accompany it with my dancing feet. As I do it, my shawl slips from my head, revealing my hair, which Higgins just this morning had put up in a French style with a blue ribbon holding it all together.
Now, I ain't a true blond, not like Clarissa Howe, I'm more of a sandy-haired type, but compared to these girls with their raven locks, I am surely a
jolie blonde,
no doubt about it. They stand astounded at both my appearance and my music.
I slip the whistle back up my sleeve and regard my audience. I put my tightly closed right fist in front of my face, my fingers toward me, my knuckles facing toward the girl who escorted me here. Then I point with my index finger to the girl, my hand moving away from my face as I do so. It is the sign for "What's your name?"
"Tepeki-kweewa-nepi," she answers, and makes the same sign back at me.
"Jacky Faber," I reply.
"Yaw-kee-a-berra," she tries, and at this, all the others are consumed with fits of laughter. "
Yaw-kee-a-berra!
Yaw-kee-a-berra!" they chant over and over. With my keen sense of when I'm being mocked, I assume that my name, when mispronounced by them, means something crude or silly in their language.
Then Tepeki-kweewa-nepi gets control of herself and admonishes the rest of them to knock it off and they do, which is good, for I didn't come here to be laughed at. She makes the sign for
sorry
and then pantomimes me playing the pennywhistle again, so I pull it out and start playing a simple dance tune.
Immediately the girls get into a circle around me and commence a shuffling kind of dance, punctuated with songs and high trills, and I can tell from the signs that they are making that it is a dance of welcome.
When they are done, I put my right hand at my shoulder level and bring it down sharply four inches or so. It is the sign for
sit down,
and they look at each other, but they do it. I open my bag of trade goods and pull out the string of sleigh bells I had gotten for a song back in Pittsburgh, and using my lacings from my vest, I tie up the bells in groups of three for each length of lacing. Then I kneel down and tie three bells to each girl's left ankle. I have just enough bells and just enough lace to do them all, with one bell left over, which I toss back into the bag. Never know when it might come in handy.
"All right, everybody up," I say, motioning with my hands. Some things don't have to be in sign language. "Now let's do it again." And I play the same simple tune again, and again they do their shuffle dance, but this time it's shuffle, shuffle,
ching!
shuffle, shuffle,
ching!
shuffle, shuffle,
ching!
Their delight is plain on their faces. Tepeki, after singing an especially joyous song that the others respond to with
yip
s and
yi-yi-yi-yis
and various other vocalizations that I do not understand but that do seem to fit, motions with her hand and the group shuffles and
ching!
s toward the center of the town. I'm beginning to suspect that this Tepeki is maybe a chief's daughter or something, 'cause she seems to have a good deal of cheek.
We take our dance through the town and are applauded with shouts and, of course, many
wah!
s and
yi-yi-yi-yi
s. I think we are a hit.
We stop, eventually, on the outskirts of the village, at the tepee of a very old man, who sits cross-legged outside his home. By his side is a collection of many flutelike things. Tepeki shushes the other girls and sends them away. I suspect they are going back to the meadow next to the river. Then we sit as she addresses the old man in a very respectful tone and then gestures for me to play on my whistle.
I do "Willow Garden," a slow and wistful piece, and when I am done, he nods and then picks up one of his own flutes and begins to play. He plays the thing by blowing across a hole rather than through a whistle, and the sound that comes out is breathy and woody and wondrously beautiful. He plays a sad song in a tuning I have never heard and will never be able to play, but it is plain why Tepeki brought me hereâshe brought me to sit at the feet of a master.
When he is done, I take my pennywhistle and extend it to him as a gift. He takes it and runs his hands over it and smiles. Then he reaches over and picks one of his flutes, one that is similar in size to my pennywhistle, and he hands it to me. Tepeki gives me a nudge and we leave to go join the others in the meadow.
No, it was not the same pennywhistle that Liam Delaney gave me back on the
Dolphin
âno, not that battered but holy old relic, which rests in honor in my sea chest, noârather it's one of many that I have picked up in my travels. And now, in exchange for it, I have an American Indian version of the same.
When Tepeki and I get back to the meadow, I once again take up my bag of trade goods and begin passing out gifts. There are mirrors and combs, of course, always a big hit with girls, no matter who they are or from what country, and yards and yards of ribbon to tie back their hair. There are satisfying expressions of delight.
When all is passed out, Tepeki jabbers off some orders and two of the girls fly off to the town. Tepeki takes me by the arm and leads me down to the river, and there, they begin to undress me. And they begin to disrobe themselves.
I express alarm and make the sign for
Men?
Tepeki shakes her head and signs,
No ... Men. Girl. Swim. Place.
Ah.
So I let them take my clothes.
They exclaim at the fairness of my skin and the pinkness of various of my parts and the blondness of my hair in all the locations it chooses to grow, but really, skinwise, I'm not much lighter than they are, especially in those places where I am tanned. They are certainly not red.
My arm sheath raises some eyebrows, and my tattoo of course gets a lot of attention and comment. I cannot,
however, come up with enough signs to explain that little item away.
We plunge into the water and have a great time of it, hooting and hollering and splashing one another, just like any girls in the world, but before we get out to let the sun dry us off, Tepeki takes me to the edge of the river and cups some water in her hands and pours it with great ceremony over my head, intoning, "
Wah-chinga-sote-caweena-que-tonk!
" This, I suspect, is my new name.
The two girls who had left come back, and we get out of the water and dry off with the blankets they have brought. They also bear gifts for me, and wondrous gifts they are.
I am dressed, again with great ceremony, in a soft buckskin shirt that is embellished with much fringe and beadwork, its lapels decorated with porcupine quills. Then I step into a fringed skirt made of the same fine, almost-white buckskin, and I marvel how they could have tanned these fine things, not having tanning chemicals and such. The skirt comes to my knees, and then moccasin leggings that go up to mid calf are pulled onto my feet, laced, then tied up, to complete my costume.
Tepeki signs to me,
You Shawnee now, Wah-chinga.
I sign back,
Thanks, Sister.
Tepeki signs to me that we should go get something to eat, and I'm all for that, so we walk back into the village together andâ
"Gor, blimey, Sarge! There's a little blond Injun there!"
My jaw drops open as I see, lined up next to a tepee in the middle of the American wilderness, a squad of redcoated British Regulars, well armed and all spit and polish, and all of them staring right at me.
"Damn me if it ain't," replies the sergeant. "Hullo, darlin'," he says, looking down at me standing there all astonished. "And what might your name be?"
Damn! What the hell is this?
"She's a darlin', she is," says one of the privates. "Wonder what the chief o' these here Hottentots 'd take for her?"
"Trade him some bangles and stuff," says another. "I'm sure the wog'd go for it."
"Roight, Willie," says yet another. "We could save her from these savages and have a bit of fun with her 'fore we gets her back to civ-il-za-tion and sets her back on the true and righteous path."
"Sure, and she's got to have been around the block a few times, livin' here wi' these red fiends. Won't be no loss to her virtue, for certain," chimes in another. So far I've heard Welsh, Cockney, and Irish from this randy crew, and I'm about to flee when the sergeant says, "Tenn-HUT!" and this parcel of rogues snaps to attention as the tent flap on the tepee next to them opens and a Captain of Cavalry steps out ... and a very splendid Captain he is, too. No crossed belts across the chest for him, no. He wears a coat of the deepest scarlet with the purest white turnouts, with a good froth of lace at his throat and wrists. White britches, black boots, and a fine sword swinging at his side. He is young, maybe twenty-two, his cheeks still downy. His hair, which is tied back with a scarlet ribbon, is not very much darker than mine.
Hmmm
...He is quite good-looking, I notice in all my confusion.
He doesn't see me right off, and I think about slinking away, but I don't ... Those are
very
nicely tailored white britches, to be sure...
"At Ease, men," the officer says. "Sergeant Bailey, the Special Agents will stay in this tent. I want a round-the-clock two-man guard posted at the front. We will bivouac around back, where there is an open space. See to the pitching of the tents ... What the hell is it, Sergeant?"
Sergeant Bailey peers around his superior officer and points at me. "Lookee there, Sir. It's a white girl."
The Captain turns about and gazes upon me. "Well,
ahem,
" he says, "and who might you be?"
I shake my head and make the signs for
no
and
speak,
and then, by drawing my right forefinger across my eyes from left to right,
paleface.
"
Hmmm.
It's obvious she doesn't speak English. A captive, no doubt. Kidnapped as a baby, I suppose." He walks slowly about me as I stand straight and unmoving. "It's none of our concern, of course, but still it is a shock to see that blond mop in the midst of all this." He reaches into his vest pocket and pulls out a long cheroot. If I thought it was going to be a little present for a poor Indian girl, I was mistaken. It is a long black cigar that he takes out and places between his lips. "Set up the camp, Sergeant. Let's get to it."
He turns back to me. "Can't a man get a light around here?" he says, tilting the long thin cigar up by thrusting out his lower jaw.
I pretend not to know what he is talking about, but Tepeki-kweewa-nepi, practiced, I'm sure, in the ways of tobacco, nudges me toward a fire laid in front of a nearby tepee, and I go over and reach in to grab the cool end of a
stick that is burning at its other end. I take it to the Captain and hold it up to him. He sticks his cigar into the flame and puffs deeply. Satisfied that he has a good light, he straightens up as he says, "Thank you, my dear. You are a neat little trick. We could have some real fun together. We surely could."