Finding Michante

CHAPTER 1

Through the smoke hole he floated into the darkening sky, across the silver ribbon of the river, and down over a field of tents with bodies lying in front like baked loaves, as dark figures walked through, impaling some and leaving others. Behind them came the dogs.

He woke face down and drooling, with dirt in his mouth. He spat and crawled away from the heat of the rocks to the edge of the tipi and lifted it to suck in the air. He lay there with his cheek in the dirt and his heart pounding and tried to clear the smoke and the dream from his brain. Then he took a deep breath and crawled on all fours along the wall until he found the opening. He staggered into the night and vomited.

You are all done, then, huh, Quinn? Cooked enough, huh? The man stood. Come over and sit by the fire. Now we wash you off and see if it took. Come, sit.

The Indian dumped half the bucket of water over Quinn's head and the rest over his crotch and legs. I did the big sweat once. He draped a blanket over Quinn's shoulders. It cured me of the drink in three days. Pretty good, huh?

He squatted at the edge of the coals and hooked an iron pot and pulled it to him. Then he flipped the lid and put his face in it. Tea's done! He poured two cups. How you feel, now, lighter? Or you still want that heavy shit? He laughed.

When Quinn found his voice it was a croak. I feel fine, Tree, just fine. I just need to get my bearings.

Almost finished. Have a little tea. Standing Cedar held out his hand to the horizon. Only one more prayer and it’s done.

When can I get my clothes? And my shoes. I’m tired and cold, Tree. I didn’t sleep so good.

"You wasn’t sleeping, Quinn. You’re tired because you didn’t sleep. In the morning you can bed down and stay down as long as you want."

And get my clothes.

"Soon. See? It’s getting light. Tanuy has left with the big moon. Behyu arrives with this sun, the White Man’s spring. A pretty nice time for any man in the world, don’t you think? The birds are awake. Let’s just sit and listen and watch."

The sun was glowing beneath the horizon when the Indian told Quinn to stand up. You don’t have to do this one. It’s not part of the healing. I just like it. You can leave the blanket or throw it off. As the sun rises, I want you to pray with me—I will say a line and you repeat it. If you don't get it, don’t worry. We will pray until the sun clears the earth and then we are done. Just so you know you are not offending your Jesus god, I will tell you the prayer. Something like this: ‘God of all things, You have given me all I have. Throw away all our sins now and bless me.’

Do I do anything?

I like to hold out my arms, he said, but just stand there and watch the sun. Anything else is up to you.

As the sun cut into the sky, Standing Cedar began to chant, pausing between phrases, and Quinn did what he could to stay with him.

Waconda

Dagure’sų aanyi

ųnrik’ų ke ki.

Waruthąnge wawagibewi

re mįtawe.

When the bowl of the sun had cleared the edge of the earth, the Otoe fell to his knees and Quinn knelt next to him. The Indian sat back on his heels and looked at the White Man. I'm finished, Quinn. No poison made by man will have control over you ever again. Not whiskey, not morphine, not opium. Nothing. I suggest you not tempt the cure, but it is true. It works. You will see. Now you can go to bed.

Quinn woke to the smell of meat and corn and onions and felt hungry. He slipped into his shoes and pulled on the black overcoat and walked out into a village of women and children cooking, sewing, and shelling corn.

I went through your things, Quinn. You don’t have much. Standing Cedar reached into his vest. I like this pipe you got. He lit it with a Lucifer match and passed it to Quinn. Then he lifted a pouch from around his neck. Before the sweat, I took the medicine pouch Lucy made for you. She saved your life, but she didn’t do you no favors after that.

Quinn held out his hand for the bag.

I didn't look in it, Quinn. Don't worry. He wrapped up the leather thong and handed it all to Quinn.

The morphine was my own doing. Quinn said. A nurse in St. Louis let me know that fact in no uncertain terms and said I had bigger pains to numb than my eye. I was dying, and Lucy saved my life. I recall she suggested I join you for a sweat that night before the New Year’s dance. Do you remember? When she led me through the camp?

Standing Cedar grunted and nodded.

So, it’s my doing, Tree, and thanks to you now, it’s gone.

Standing Cedar led Quinn to where they had sat the night before. And that nurse in St. Louis--you still got other pains? I don’t know if the big sweat could take that out of you, Quinn. There’s only so much it can do.

It’s a start. I need to think about where I go from here. How about you, Tree? You want to go with me to stake a claim? Maybe one for yourself? It wouldn’t cost you to take a look.

The Indian shook his head. You know what happens when I file a claim, Quinn? I become an American citizen! Just like that! He laughed. And then where would I be? If there was a war, I’d get killed by both sides! Anyway, we mixed-up breeds already have our land here. The Bureau is cutting it up and putting our names on the pieces so we know who owns what here on the reservation. If we don’t like that, they say, there are places in Indian Territory they will give us. He snorted. They will give us Indian Territory! He scuffed his moccasin in the dirt. You can go make a claim on the land, Quinn, but you can’t own it. The men in Washington may tell you it’s yours, but it ain’t. And if they decide to take it and give it to someone else, they can. And you can bet they will.

As Standing Cedar spoke, Quinn remembered his friend Rafe talking about the place he had farmed for three years before the railroad took it.

The Indian continued. If they want it, they’ll take it. So my advice is, you go ahead. Claim some piece-of-shit ground that nobody wants between two rivers that are both hard to cross. Maybe the stretch between the Big and Little Blue River is a good place to look. He laughed. It’ll give you good protection from the Indians who are on the warpath because you stole their land.

You serious, Tree?

I am and I ain’t. Since the Minnesota hangings and the Dakota slaughter, the young bucks in the free tribes are getting hard to control. We don’t have to worry down here. Too far away. But if I was working along the trails west, I’d travel with lots of folks who could shoot.

What about your people here?

Ah! We are all tamed. It’s the White blood in us. Makes us want to put up fences and farm small plots of dirt and raise chickens.

Quinn puffed on his pipe and waited.

They took away our right to hunt, Quinn. We can’t cross the Missouri to hunt anything, but we are allowed to kill whatever deer and antelope we can find from here to the Platte. Go above that and we run into the Pawnee. To the west we meet the Arapaho. We are not a warrior people, and since living with the Whites, we have forgotten many of our ways. The buffalo will soon be gone anyway, so it’s best we learn to farm. Lucy was right. Learn the ways of the White Man or your children and grandchildren will starve. She didn’t mention that you might get killed before you see them starve. Maybe I will go out with you, Quinn. You can teach me a thing or two that I could come back and use here, maybe.

I could use a hand and would enjoy the company, Tree. You could see if you like it.

"If I went, it would mean leaving the reservation without a Medicine Man for a while, but more and more they need me less and less. I wish Lucy would come back. The Bureau sends a White doctor over here once or twice a month to look in our mouths and stir our shit and blow stuff up our noses. Where’s the fun in that? Medicine should be something you do, not something that is done to you, you know?

It’s like magic, Tree—it works or it doesn’t. What you and Lucy do works. That’s all that matters to me. What became of her, Tree? Where did she go?

To where she was before, I guess.

Do you think she'll be back?

Standing Cedar nodded. Yes. Her people are here. This is where she belongs. After her time healing the fighting White Men is over, she will return and she will bring back to us what she has learned.

Did she ever tell you why she went?

No, but I think she's confused about who she is. Her grandfather sent her to Boston when she was eight years old. He was an important man, a chief here until he died. He founded the town up there. Standing Cedar waved his arm. "Deroin. That's where she got her White blood. He was the son of a Frenchman and an Otoe woman. Lucy came back when he died and tried to start something.

When she came back it was clear she was a New Indian. Not like me, not a Blanket Indian. She brought back ideas and ways that were not of our people. She set up a school and began to teach children during the day and the women at night. Soon after, she brought three White Women to the reservation and announced that we were going to be one of the stations on what was called The Lane Trail."

Quinn nodded. Maybe one was Marion Lewis, the woman who brought me here from across the river after I was shot. Her husband and me were going to file a claim in Nebraska together. She said she took runaways from the Trail and got them up as far as Civil Bend.

Might be, Standing Cedar nodded. "Might be one of the women. One of them got Lucy to go to the army and work at their hospital. And then she went to follow the men who were fighting. She came back once, once before you came here, and stayed with an old crazy woman on the edge of the village. Then she went back to the battlefield. I didn't get to see her much. I thought then that I was a big Medicine Man. Important. She wasn't interested in the old ways, I thought then. But I was wrong. She knew the old ways.

We all knew Lucy as an owl woman. I don’t mean to say she was a member of the Owl Clan, although she was that, too. I am a member of the Ioway Owl Clan. The old ones call her kind ‘Wapunka Inihkacin.’ Her Otoe name is Marata, ‘Echo Woman,’ because it is said that she speaks to owls in their language. It is said that women like her deal with spirits that are gone and want to come back, or with spirits who struggle with death and do not embrace it. These do not accept the way of things. We all know that everything in the world comes in and goes out in its own time, but there are spirits who fight the leaving and find a way to come back into the world of the living, and it is said owl women know how to deal with them. People go to them to handle ghosts that cause trouble. It is said they know how to put them down. It is said they sometimes help the powerful ones come back. Maybe a fox who comes back as a man or even a man who comes back as a woman. Some say that the most powerful owl women can do it by themselves--take turns as owls and then as women. And as owls they can turn themselves back when they want. They fly soundlessly at night and see things a man can’t see. Maybe that is why she went to the battlefield and why she went back again.

Some say she was in love with a White Man, and that’s why she left. She told me that she was run out of the hospital camp, not on account of her officer, but because she was too good as a nurse. The White Women, maybe it was the sisters at the hospital down there, I don’t know, they said she was a heathen witch and was placing spells on the men she cared for and that some she killed