New-wappy Te-ah (part five)
Te-ah awoke to her friend’s gentle touch as Kah-o-weep bathed her burning skin with cool water. At first Te-ah said nothing. She simply studied her friend’s eyes and remembered the lifetime they had shared together. Spring mornings, spent running through the meadows and playing children’s games. Summer afternoons of sitting side by side beneath a tree, laughing and singing while they worked. Winter nights, huddled in a wikiup, their hands cold and their bellies crying with hunger.
Like herself, Kah-o-weep was born the spring of the great buffalo kill. As their ancestors had done before them, the Paiute warriors were swift and skillful as they stampeded the huge herd and guided the thundering animals toward a cliff, not far from their village. In their frenzy, the huge animals had been unable to stop when the earth before them fell away into nothingness. With the animals behind pushing at their backs they had fallen, dozens at a time, to their death.
Old women still talked about that year. The year when every belly had been full and every wikiup warmed by heavy pelts. But the next year the buffalo did not come. Nor the next.
Herds require vast stretches of open grass land to fill their many stomachs. And the grass lands were no more. Eaten up by the white man’s plow and cut apart by his fences. Now Paiute women dug roots from the ground and gathered berries, but there was never enough. Blankets were made from stitching rabbit pelts together, but it took so many – and so much time. Now, even the deer and elk were few in numbers.
Paiute warriors, like her father and grandfather were strong and skilled. They could cover many miles on foot and their arrows seldom missed their mark. But every kill had to be transported back to camp and they had no horses.
Te-ah heard a whiney and turned her head painfully in the direction of the sound. At the edge of the camp a half dozen of the coveted animals grazed.
Horses. These strong graceful creatures were the greatest wealth a tribe could possess. In such difficult times as these, they made the difference between life and starvation, misery or plenty.
Kah –o-weep laid aside the water she had used to cleanse Te-ah’s broken skin and slipped a gentle hand behind her friend’s head. Very slowly and with great care she lifted Te-ah’s head enough for her to swallow the broth she spooned between the girl’s split and swollen lips.
Daylight had faded into shades of gray. Birds, who had sung their evening songs, settled in for the night and a gentle breeze breathed through the trees. Wisps of smoke from the evening campfires danced heavenward, filling the air with the warm scent of cedar and pine.
In the distance, Ute laughter broke the evening spell. Te-ah closed her eyes and shuddered. These warriors were no stronger or braver than the men of her own tribe, and had been fewer in numbers. But because they rode on the backs of the animals that some still called elk dogs, they had conquered with little effort. Now, she and her brother Pow-inch – Kah-o-weep too – would most likely be sold into slavery. All of this because her tribe had no horses.
In that moment – sore, beaten, and barely alive – a determination formed within her soul, swelling until it all but consumed her shattered body.
“No. She would not allow herself to be sold into slavery, to be used in whatever manner her buyer desired. Nor would she allow her young brother and her dear friend that same, awful fate.
She would watch. She would wait. She would learn. And when the time was right she would steal these Ute horses. She and her friends would ride away with them and when they returned to their village, the Paiutes would be horseless no longer. “
thestorygodmother 