Shaman

It seemed that no time had passed when Wind Bends Grass shook her awake.

"Your father calls the people together," she said in a voice still hard with anger.

Redbird's eyelids felt as if they were made of stone. She forced herself to sit up, and then with immense effort got to her feet.

She was still fully dressed, even in her fur cloak and mittens. She had collapsed in the wickiup without removing anything. The wickiup was now empty. Her mother and her sisters had gone ahead without her.

Her heart hammered in her chest. Owl Carver might be calling the people to tell them that Gray Cloud was dead.

Outside, the air was still deathly cold, but the sun was a bright yellow disk rising above the distant gray line of trees that marked the bluffs overlooking the Great River. The light made her blink, and she turned away from it. She stumbled in the direction all the other people were going-to the medicine wickiup in the center of the camp circle.

She found that the open area before the wickiup was crowded, and she could not get close. The spaces between nearby wickiups were also filled with people, all waiting for Owl Carver to speak.

She seated herself between two women, both of whom had small children on their laps. Redbird knew one of the mothers, Water Flows Fast, a stout woman with a round, cheerful face and shrewd eyes.

Water Flows Fast said, "You are the daughter of Owl Carver. You should go up and sit close to him." Redbird sliced her hand flat across her body to say no. She knew Water Flows Fast to be a keen observer and a gossip, always looking for signs of trouble in other people's families. The less Redbird said to her, the better.

Redbird looked over her shoulder and saw that now there were many more people packed in behind her. Everyone was talking at once, and the hundreds of voices beating upon her ears made her head hurt. About five hundred people were here, everyone in this camp, which was one of four that made up the British Band of the Sauk and Fox tribes that would come together in Saukenuk after the winter snow and ice melted.

The medicine wickiup was built on a low hill in the center of the camp, and when Owl Carver appeared, everyone who was standing sat down. Redbird's eyes devoured Owl Carver's face, trying to read in it whether Gray Cloud was alive or dead.

Another man emerged from the medicine wickiup to stand beside Owl Carver. His head was bare even on this terribly cold day, and he wore his hair in the manner of a brave, his dark brown scalp shaved except for a long black scalplock that coiled down the side of his face. His eyes were shadowed and sad-looking, and there were heavy blue-black pouches under them. His cheekbones jutted out and his mouth was wide, curving down at the corners where it met deep furrows that ran from nose to chin.

Redbird's heart beat faster as she saw that to honor this moment he had attached a string of eagle feathers to his scalplock and wore strings of small white beads around the rim of each ear. He stood with his arms folded under a buffalo robe, skin side out, painted with a red hand proclaiming that he had killed and scalped his first enemy while still a boy.

His sombre gaze fell upon Redbird like a stone striking her from a great height. She felt as if the war chief of the British Band knew every one of her secrets. She ducked her head and looked down at her mittened hands in her lap.

Owl Carver raised his arms, and the people fell silent.

"I have called on Black Hawk, our war chief, to see Gray Cloud, and he has heard great prophecies from Gray Cloud's lips," the shaman cried in a high, chanting voice.

Then Gray Cloud had lived through the night!

Owl Carver blurred in Redbird's sight, and if she had not already been seated, she might have collapsed. Relief made her heart swell up in her chest, feeling as if it might burst.

The people around her murmured in surprise, pleasure and curiosity.

The shaman stretched out his hand. "Sun Woman, stand before the people."

Nothing happened for a long moment. Then Owl Carver beckoned insistently. There was another silence. Then Black Hawk's hand emerged from under his buffalo mantle, and he crooked his finger.

A tall woman wrapped in a buffalo robe rose from among the seated people. People sighed happily and called out a welcome to her.

Sun Woman turned to face the crowd. To Redbird she seemed calm and unruffled, even though she had hesitated about standing up.

"This woman brought her son to me and asked me to train him as a shaman," Owl Carver declared. "I did not want to, because he is not a pure Sauk. She said to me, only try him for a little time and see what he can be. I tried him for a little time and I saw something in him. I saw sleeping powers!"

The people murmured in wonder. Water Flows Fast and the woman with her whispered to each other, darting curious glances at Redbird, who carefully kept her face as impassive as Sun Woman's.

"I tested him and saw that his dreams could foretell the future, that he could send his spirit walking while his body lay still, that he could talk to the spirits in trees and birds. I saw that he had the power to be a shaman and more ..."

Owl Carver paused and stared at them fiercely.

"And so I sent him up to the sacred cave, knowing that he might meet spirits so powerful that to encounter them destroys the souls of men.

"And Gray Cloud went into the sacred cave, and he met the great spirits, and he journeyed with them," Owl Carver cried. People gasped.

"He has met the White Bear. He has spoken with the Turtle, father of the Great River. He has brought back a message for Black Hawk," said Owl Carver. "The Turtle told Gray Cloud that Black Hawk might tell others as he saw fit." The rumble of voices rose at this, and then quieted as Owl Carver raised his medicine stick.

"After the Turtle created our Mother the Earth, he mated with her, and all tribes were born in her womb," Owl Carver said. "They lived there in a warm darkness, but they had to go forth and find their way out of our Mother. Then there came to our ancestors an elder spirit, the White Bear, who led them out the womb of our Mother.

"When they were in the light, they found themselves in the midst of a ring of fiery mountains. Our people are called Osaukawug, or Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire, because that fiery place is where we first walked in the world. There was nothing to eat. There was nothing around the people but stones and fire. And they were hungry and greatly afraid, and they were angry at the White Bear for leading them out of our Mother to this place.

"But the White Bear showed them a way through the fiery mountains and over many fields of snow and ice, until he brought our ancestors to this good land where there is fish and game, where the grasslands are green and the woods are full of berries and fruit. And our friends the Fox, the Yellow Earth People, came to be our allies and to unite with us. And the Turtle opened his heart and the Great River flowed forth. Our ancestors hunted and fished in the land where the Rock River flows into the Great River. On the Rock River they built our village of Saukenuk, where they would dwell in the summer and their women would grow the Three Sisters, corn, beans and squash, in the fields around the village. And there at Saukenuk, as our ancestors died, they were buried.

"The White Bear told us we should spend our summers in that land east of the Great River. In the winter it should be our custom to cross to the west of the Great River and hunt here in the Ioway Country. And here by the Great River we Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire, have lived ever since."

Redbird felt warmth on her back through her buffalo robe. The sun had risen higher.

Owl Carver called out in his high voice of prophecy, "The White Bear has come again. He has led Gray Cloud on his spirit journey. Now Gray Cloud is a true shaman. He still must be trained to use his powers, but his powers no longer sleep. And in sign that he is a shaman with another self, he shall have a new name. Let him be known to all the people as White Bear!"

Redbird heard cries of assent from the people around her.

Owl Carver crossed his arms before his chest to show that he was finished speaking, and turned to Black Hawk.

"So let it be," said Black Hawk in his harsh, grating voice. "Earthmaker has willed that the British Band shall be blessed with a mighty new spirit walker. Let his name hereafter be White Bear."

If I could make a spirit journey, Redbird thought, I too could stand before the people and advise them.

She came to a sudden resolve. One day I will.

"Now you shall see our new shaman," Owl Carver declared. He stepped back and pulled aside the buffalo-fur curtain that covered the door of his wickiup.

A tall young man came out, stooping to pass through the doorway and then standing straight before the people. Redbird's heart beat faster, and she half rose to her feet.

His slender body, despite the cold, was bare to the waist. Redbird gasped as she saw what was on his chest.

Five long, deep...